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Bottle Found at Sea Used for Scientific Purpose

    Combing the beach for shells, sea glass, or colorful rocks is a leisure activity enjoyed by many. Some even use metal detectors to find buried treasure or other objects. Only the lucky few have a message in a bottle that was dropped off by the tide. The tradition of putting a letter to an unknown recipient into a bottle and throwing it into the ocean has an interesting past. An early use for the practice was revealed when the oldest recorded message in a bottle was found by Tonya on a beach near Wedge Island, Australia.

    Tonya was on a family outing when she noticed the antique glass bottle in the sand and thought it would make a nice . While she was cleaning the sandy gin bottle, a rolled up paper tied with a fell out. The damp page was a message written in German and dated June 12, 1886. According to official documents from the German sailing vessels, Paula, a crew member tossed the bottle overboard a(n) 950 km off the coast of Western Australia. Further researchauthenticated(验证)the letter, which had been sent afloat 132 years ago and is the oldest message in a bottle ever .

    Historians confirm that thousands of similar bottles were cast overboard by German ships between 1864 and 1933. And inside were official documents written by the captain of the ship, routes, coordinates, and other information. These early messages in a bottle were an attempt by the German Naval Observatory to map ocean around the world.

    On the back of the notes were to write the time and place the bottles were found and return them to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest German authorities. Using this information for reference was an early system of studying patterns in nature and the vast ocean in particular.