Message in Bottle tossed in the ocean in 1956 discovered

Back in 1956 a scientists named Dean Bumpus from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod was out in the ocean tossing bottles into the water as a way to track ocean currents. Recently a scientist that was studying grey seals near Nova Scotia found one of the messages in a bottle, 58 years later.

The bottle was discovered 300 miles from where it was released and was found under a pile of debris on the beach. The scientist who found the bottle was Warren Joyce. The bottle was one of 300,000 that were dumped into the Atlantic ocean between 1956 and 1972 as part of the Bumpus study of surface and bottom ocean currents.

So far, only about 10% of the 300,000 bottles dumped into the ocean during the project have been discovered. Joyce found his bottle on January 20 on Sable island. The postcard inside the bottle asked the finder to contact Woods Hole to give them the time and place where the bottle was discovered.

The reward for reporting the information offered in 1956 was a 50-cent piece. The Woods Hole team plans to send Joyce his half dollar. Joyce said he didn't want the reward, but the team is sending it anyway. As for why the team used bottles, Woods Hole scientists say that they were the only way to track currents back then since satellites didn't exist. The bottle Joyce was found was released not far from Nova Scotia on April 26, 1956.

SOURCE: Fox News