Jim and Candy Duke were on one of their normal walks along the beach last month when they came upon a “wonderful treasure” — a glass bottle with a message inside!
The Corpus Christi, Texas, pair was at the Padre Island National Seashore not far from their house when they spotted a worn glass bottle lying about some tree limbs that had washed up on the beach, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries.
“The bottle’s just a standard little white bottle that has a cork in the top and it says… ‘break bottle,’ ” Candy said in a Facebook Live video of the couple with the bottle. “We don’t wanna break the bottle … we collect the bottles from the beach. It also has a number on it. The number is 002338.”
With that, the couple spent almost ten minutes attempting to remove the bottle’s rubber cork and pull out the note inside. Eventually, they were successful. Candy looked visibly excited as she unrolled the note and read the message for all of her Facebook friends.
When Jim recommended ending the live video as they tried to open the bottle, Candy objected, simply saying, “This is real life!”
“This bottle is one of a series released at known locations in the Gulf of Mexico by scientists from the Galveston Botanical Laboratories of the US Bureau of Commercial Fisheries,” Candy read. “These releases are part of a study to determine the role that water currents play in the movement of young shrimp from offshore spawning grounds to inshore nursery grounds.”
The laboratory is currently known as NOAA Fisheries. The letter also said that whoever found the message was to mail it back to the scientists in exchange for a 50 cent reward.
https://www.facebook.com/candy.e.lovins/videos/10213541081022438/
The bottle is one of 7,863 released by the scientists in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico from February 1962 to December 1963, according to the statement from NOAA Fisheries.
It is unclear whether the Dukes have sent back the letter as instructed. But Candy said in the video that the couple plans to add the bottle to their growing collection of bizarre finds from their many walks along the beach.
