The Best Thing in Texas: A Message in a Bottle Washed Up on Padre Island—57 Years Later

The message within explained the purpose of the study, as well as a postcard for the finder to fill out, explaining in detail how and where they retrieved the bottle. In exchange, the agency promised a reward of fifty cents, roughly $4.19 in today’s dollars.

The Dukes, dutiful citizens, put the postcard in the mail, although they told the agency not to bother with the reward. It made it to Matthew Johnson, acting director of the NOAA lab, who told the Express-News that he believed this particular bottle was sent out to shore around May 1962, as part of the year-long study. He also explained that, while the message-in-a-bottle technology has been around for a very long time (historians believe that it dates back to as early as 310 BCE), it’s no longer particularly relevant to science. “With the development of satellite technology, we don’t do many bottle studies anymore,” he told the paper. The bottle may not have carried great insights about shrimp, but it brought a clear reminder of how cool science can be.