In the United States they found a bottle thrown into the sea in Spain a year and a half ago

On July 31, a 10-year-old boy found a bottle dumped in the sea at Cocoa Beach, a beach in Florida (USA), and when he opened it he found a handwritten letter from several Spanish scientists from CSIC, those in charge of leaving it in Mid-Atlantic a year and a half ago, on December 29, 2020, when they boarded the Sarmiento de Gamboa oceanographic vessel.

This new story of “Message in a Bottle” was revealed today by Nuria Trela, one of the researchers who participated in the expedition, to Cadena Ser in Catalonia.

It all began, Trilla explained to SER, with an expedition from the CSIC Institute for Environmental Diagnostics in Barcelona, ​​which is looking at pollution in seas and oceans around the world.

A group of scientists from all over Spain, many of them Catalans, made a route from Vigo (Pontevedra) to Punta Arenas (Chile), to analyze environmental samples of water, air, and plankton.

When they were halfway, and a little above the equator, they came up with the idea to imitate the plot of the movie “Message in a Bottle”, directed by Louis Manduki in 1999, based on the monolithic novel by Nicholas Sparks. and starring Kevin Costner and Paul Newman, among other artists.

“I think it’s everyone’s business,” Trilla explained to SER, “We enjoyed throwing a bottle with a message in the sea and seeing how it turns out.”

“We put in our photos and a handwritten letter with emails to contact us, date – December 22, 2020 – and explain what we were doing. All this is to see who will find it.”

They tossed the bottle into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at sunset, “in a moment of communication” between 17 scientists and 25 members of the expedition crew, who continued their journey to Punta Arenas to do their work, collect samples and do scientific work. . and wait.

More than a year and a half later, on July 31 at Cocoa Beach, a beach in Florida, in the United States, an hour’s drive from Orlando, Alec Bagdasarian was on vacation with his family: his mother Yulia and his father Gregory.

They found the bottle, opened it, and discovered that there was a message inside from a team of scientists.

When they saw that there were several email addresses, they did not hesitate to call them and wrote to them in Spanish.

Hello Sailor Friends of Sarmiento de Gamboa! Thanks for the surprise. We found the bottle in Cocoa Beach, Florida. My name is Alexander Bagsagrian. I am 10 years old and I live in Lexington, Kentucky. Thank you friends, I used the translator to write this message. Opening the bottle was so exciting, we had no idea what was inside. Thank you so much. Sincerely, your friend, Alec.” This was the message the Spanish scientists received in their email.

SER Catalunya contacted Alec’s relatives, who explained that they were now on vacation in France and would take a few days to return to Kentucky, but assured them that “the discovery made their summer somewhat more exciting.”