Old school Social Networking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14859116

Over the last two decades, Harold Hackett has sent out over 4,800 messages in a bottle from Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province along the Atlantic coastline.

Every message asks for the finder to send a response back to Hackett, and since 1996 he has received over 3,100 responses from all over the world.

3100 response out of 4800 messages in a bottle is a remarkable ratio. I would have expected the number of responses to be far less. Very interesting, I wonder what it would look like if you could plot out the launch sites and the places where the bottles were found...

It would be cool to track it by GPS.

Yep, CG. Take an really old fashion mail program and track it with the latest technology. Really kind of funny.
Plotting out recovery sites is only a matter of examining where the responses came from or what the sender had to say about finding the bottled message. Wind-driven currents, seasonal currents, the ocean gyre, tidal currents all come into play likely along with possibly hitching a ride on a large pelagic. Now the neat part for the gps would be to find where the lost bottles are stuck.

True that would be cool!

When I was a kid in Texas, I used to send up large (3-foot) balloons filled with natural gas from my home with a note in a plastic baggie attached to the bottom.

I got responses from most of the Southern states east of Texas.

The trick in filling the balloon was filling it with just enough gas to get it off the ground to allow for expansion as it rose in the air. I used natural gas because the molecules are larger than helium and the balloon didn't leak as fast.

And to think he'd probably be cited for littering here in the US.... just saying.










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