Josie Law holds a bag containing the note and bottle she found on a beach in May.

Jim McMahon/Mapman® (globe); Courtesy of family ( Josie Law); Shutterstock.com (beach, background)

Lost and Found

Josie Law loves looking for seashells and shark teeth at the beach. But in May, the 11-year-old spotted something really special. She found a message in a bottle. 

Josie and her family are from Howell, Michigan. They were on vacation on Anna Maria Island in Florida when the small bottle washed ashore. Inside were two paper birds and a handwritten message. A phone number and the date August 17, 2018, were written near the bottom.

Josie’s mom sent a text to the number. She was surprised to get a reply—from a 21-year-old woman in Hawaii! The woman and her younger brother had tossed the bottle into the Pacific Ocean about seven years ago. 

“I can’t believe that they responded,” Josie says.

A Long Journey

Jim McMahon/Mapman®

How did the bottle travel thousands of miles from Hawaii to Florida? No one knows for sure. But one possibility is that it traveled through the Panama Canal. That waterway connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The bottle might have gotten stuck to the bottom of a ship. Or it could have been pushed along by ocean currents. 

Josie knows it isn’t a good idea to put bottles in the ocean. They can be harmful to fish and other sea life. Still, finding a message in a bottle is an experience she won’t forget.

“I’m going to keep it forever,” Josie says.

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