57-year-old message in bottle washes up on Texas shore



>>> Scroll through to see more on the 57-year-old relic. A message in a bottle dropped in the Gulf of Mexico by a Galveston laboratory was found by a Corpus Christi, Texas, couple.

>>> Scroll through to see more on the 57-year-old relic. A message in a bottle dropped in the Gulf of Mexico by a Galveston laboratory was found by a Corpus Christi, Texas, couple. Photo: Candy Duke Photo: Candy Duke Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close 57-year-old message in bottle washes up on Texas shore 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

A message in a bottle dropped in the Gulf of Mexico by a Galveston laboratory was found by a Corpus Christi, Texas, couple in January, 57 years after it was tossed into the water.

Candy and Jim Duke discovered the artifact on the Padre Island National Seashore.

"My husband and I go out there almost every Saturday morning. We get there before sunrise to take photos, and then drive down the beach to search for treasure," Candy Duke told Chron.com. "That's where we found the bottle, at around marker 22."

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At first glance, the Dukes weren't sure if the clear glass container was a worthy addition to their bottle collection.

"This one wasn't colored ... my husband almost didn't pick it up," she said. "But I told him to pick it up anyway."

After inspecting the bottle, the Dukes realized there may be something special about their find. "My husband looked at it and said, 'there's something down in here,'" Candy Duke said.

As it turns out, the bottle, with a message inside, was part of a 1962 "drift study" by the Galveston Laboratory of the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, now known as the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA). The research was an effort to determine the direction and rate of flow of surface waters in the northwestern Gulf of Mex­ico.

"The study was done in the early days of shrimp management. It looked at where adult shrimp live, offshore, versus where juvenile shrimp live, inshore. The idea was, if you look at surface currents, you could connect the two," NOAA acting lab director Matthew Johnson, Ph.D., told Chron.com.

Scientists dropped approximately 1,796 bottles across the western half of the Gulf of Mexico over the course of several days between 1962 and 1963, according to NOAA, which is currently working to retrieve more records on the drift study from an out-of-state storage facility.

"After the hurricane, we moved the records to D.C.," Johnson said. "But May 1962 is about when we think this bottle was dropped."

"Someone mentioned that the last bottle found was in 2000 but we haven't been able to confirm that yet," he added.

And the message inside? Each bottle contained a bright reddish-orange card that reads in part:

"These releases are part of a study to determine the role that water currents play in the movement of young shrimp from offshore spawning grounds to inshore nursery grounds. The person finding this bottle should complete the enclosed postcard and mail it at the first opportunity. A fifty cent reward will be sent for each completed return."

Not wanting to break the bottle to get the message out, the Dukes took the relic home and posted a Facebook video with how they managed to pop the cork and slide the card out.

As per the instructions, they mailed the card to the Galveston lab. "I told them not to send us the 50 cents," Candy Duke noted. Before returning it, however, she took a photo of it to keep as a memento. "I want to make a shadow box with the bottle and photo to hang in our house."

At NOAA in Galveston, the card landed in the hands of Johnson, who has been in touch with the Dukes several times since. "We've talked about it and they've sent me reports on the findings," Candy Duke said.

These days, drift studies by NOAA are rare. "With the development of satellite technology, we don't do many bottle studies anymore," Johnson said.

Current projects at NOAA include research on turtle rearing. "It's for restocking efforts. We travel to Mexico or Florida to collect eggs, grow and hatch them, then release them back into environment," Johnson said. "We give them a jumpstart."

NOAA is located at 4700 Avenue U, Galveston, Texas, at the former site of the U.S Army's Fort Crockett.

Marcy de Luna is a digital reporter specializing in social media, the famous, and food. You can follow her on Twitter @MarcydeLuna and Facebook @MarcydeLuna. Read her stories on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com. | Marcy.deLuna@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message