'Message in a bottle' found 9,000 miles away with a tech twist
Finding a message in a bottle is every romantic's dream and it recently happened IRL for one woman on a Scottish island.
Rhoda Meek, who lives in Tiree in the inner Hebrides, was alerted by a friend that one of those special messages had came ashore.
She went to investigate and discovered it was in fact a GPS-tracked scientific experiment that travelled all the way from Iceland.
The story behind this "message in a bottle"
Two GPS tracker capsules were dropped from a helicopter into the sea as part of a project with Iceland's national broadcaster and the engineering company Verkis.
The aim was to show children that rubbish dumped in the sea does not disappear. It comes ashore and becomes a problem for the environment and people living on coastlines.
The bottles can be tracked online.
The second device is still floating off the Western Isles.
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The Icelandic scientists expected the devices to wash up in Norway after sailing past Greenland and drifting off the coast of Canada. But they ended up going further south to Scotland instead.
"The path to Norway did not come through," Verkis said on its website. "Consistent easterly winds right after the release of the bottles carried them west past the Reykjanes Ridge and for the next few months circled a couple of times around the Irminger Basin following the so called Iceland low."
"Southwest of Iceland, the air pressure is the lowest in the northern hemisphere and forms the Iceland low which is strong in the winters and weak in the spring."
So what did the Scottish woman do upon discovering the devices? She wrapped it up and posted it back to Iceland.
