Bottle message from Japan takes 12 years to reach O'ahu
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Staff Writer
HANAUMA BAY — A bottle that was part of a Japanese student's ocean current research project washed ashore at this East Honolulu beach this week after circulating throughout the Pacific for 12 years.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
Inside the clear bottle were two notes — one in English and one in Japanese — asking the finder to report back to the student's school the date the bottle was found and its location.
Sarah Hurst, an attendant at Hanauma Bay, shows the message — in English and Japanese — she found in a bottle on the beach at Hanauma Bay. The bottle was cast into the sea off Japan on Jan. 11, 1992.
Alan Hong said this was the first message in a bottle that has come to shore in the bay in the 14 years he's been the park manager. The find was also uncommon because things from Japan rarely make their way to Hawai'i via ocean currents, experts said.
The bottle has generated excitement at Hanauma Bay since it was discovered Wednesday by park ranger Sarah Hurst on a routine patrol of the shoreline before the park opened.
"Sitting in the sun for 12 years everything inside the bottle is much cooked, so to be able to read the note is pretty exciting," said Robin Bond, former president of the Friends of Hanauma Bay.
Todd Hendricks, a Kailua High School marine science teacher, theorized that the bottle could have circulated around the Pacific several times, traveling from Japan to Alaska then down to Washington, Oregon and California before entering the North Equatorial Current that would bring it to Hawai'i and across the Pacific and to the Philippines and back to Japan.
Hendricks' students have been dropping bottles with letters into the ocean to study currents for 24 years, amounting to about 720 bottles. Five to six a year are found, and people contact the school, he said. The longest surviving bottle was discovered in Japan 14 years after being released.
Currents and wind make a difference in where a bottle ends up.
"It's very seldom that we get (one) from Japan," Hendricks said, adding that once a bottle approaches the Philippines it could enter a swift current that would take it past Japan, then north toward Alaska. "That's the theory anyway."
Only two or three bottles have reached Japan in the 24 years he has held the class, he said.
The bottle found at Hanauma Bay was part of an unusually large amount of debris scattered over the beach near Witches Brew on the right side of the bay as one descends to the water, Hurst said. Several old buoys, a number of plastic and glass bottles and driftwood had come to shore, she said, adding that she thought recent heavy trade winds might have brought the extra rubbish.
When Hurst found the bottle she said she could see the English and Kanji writing but couldn't tell right away what was in the message.
The bottle "didn't smell very good," said Hurst. "Algae and all kinds of funk was growing on the bottle, mostly around the neck and cap."
Untwisting the cap was difficult, but once she used pliers, the cap peeled off like a piece of aluminum foil, Hurst said.
Getting the paper out proved to be impossible. After years of exposure to the elements, the paper was too fragile and couldn't be pulled through the neck, she said.
"The paper was disintegrating like powder," Hurst said.
After consulting with the education specialist at the park, they decided the bottle wasn't old and the only way to get to the message was to break the glass, Hurst said. Even then, though, the paper wouldn't uncurl and broke apart when they tried to open it.
Someone put the pieces together, pasted them to another paper and put that in a protective plastic sleeve, she said.
According to the note in the bottle, eighth-grader Kazumasa Miura cast the bottle from a boat into the ocean at 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 11, 1992, off the Miyaka Islands. The boat was sailing from Harumi Port and heading for Kuji Port in Iwate, where the student's school, Ohmine High School, is.
"In order to research the current of the sea, we threw away the bottle," Miura wrote.
The school couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.
Hurst said she would comply with Miura's request for information and send it to the school along with a photograph of Hanauma Bay.
