Message In A Bottle Finally Washes Ashore

A father and daughter looking for Japanese glass floats near Fort Stevens have come across a message in a bottle launched from Japan in 1995.

The messsage found by 10-year-old Alexis Malcom and her father, Troy Malcom, was one of at least five, all from Japan, found by beachcombers in Oregon and southwest Washington since March.

Alexis says the clear glass bottle contained three pieces of brittle, sun-yellowed paper rolled up inside. Two others have been found near Yachats, one near Newport and one on Washington´s Long Beach Peninsula.

The oldest note was written in 1985. The bottle the Malcolms found on April 10 was launched by Satoshi Ohta, an education major at Kagoshima University. Ohta was on a biology class field trip to the tiny island of Kodakara in the south of Japan.

Oregon State University oceanography professor Jack Barth says the bottles probably followed a circuitous route to get here. He said they probably were carried along by currents until strong winter winds and forces generated by the rotation of the earth caused the surface water to go directly on shore. He said the finds are unusual because they came from a great distance and from different years.