After more than a year of traveling across the sea, a message in a bottle found itself 4,000 miles away.
What You Need To Know
That bottled message started at the coast of Morehead City, and after voyaging across the Atlantic Ocean for more than a year, a fisherman in Morocco found it.
The bottles were cast into the Atlantic Ocean during a Reelin for Research event by a Greensboro Day School parent.
The fisherman sent her an e-mail, informing her he found her letter on White Beach near the city of Guelmim.
Greensboro Day School student, Vivian Bylery wrote a message back in April 2019 that said, “Be strong because things will get better, it may be stormy now but it never rains forever.”
This is the uplifting quote she included in a message along with her name, school name, her 3rd grade teacher’s name, as well as an e-mail and her school’s address.
Her message was sent out to sea, and her hope was it would be found by someone far away.
The bottles were cast into the Atlantic Ocean during a Reelin for Research event by a Greensboro Day School parent.
“I just thought I would never get an answer or it would be when I was in high school or in college or even late middle school,” Bylery said.
That bottled message started at the coast of Morehead City, and after voyaging across the Atlantic Ocean for more than a year, was found by a fisherman in Morocco.
Bylery knows this because that fisherman sent her an e-mail, informing her he found her letter on White Beach near the city of Guelmim. He then sent a photo of himself holding her letter.
“I was not expecting my letter to be found so soon, and I just think it’s really cool it traveled all the way to Morocco,” Bylery explained.
Her school’s “Pirate Day” festivities inspired the idea.
The 3rd grade teacher, Susan Ferguson, was giving a lesson about North Carolina where they studied the coastal plains region and learned a little bit about pirate activity in the 1700s. Ferguson initiated the message in a bottle project and was amazed by its results.
“Now that we know that it can actually work, I would love to do the project again. We weren’t able to do it this spring due to COVID, but hopefully next spring we can try to launch some additional bottles,” Ferguson said.
Now, Vivian and the fisherman keep in touch, sending photos back and fourth through e-mail and learning about each other’s cultures. Pen-pals from 4,000 miles away.
