Message In A Bottle - It's Not Littering, It's Science! - SPONSOR WANTED FOR "GREY GOOSE" EXPEDITION

Global warming is melting ice in the Arctic and that means more cold water entering the oceans.   How it will affect ocean currents is unknown, numerical models of chaos being pretty useless, but there is a way to at least start to find out - throw a biodegradable bottle off a ship and wait for it to wash ashore.   If it turns up some place you never expected or lands where you expect but much faster than models show, it could be evidence of ocean current change and, with that, changes in weather.

Enter Bonita LeBlanc, an 11th grader from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and her drift bottle experiment.   How did she get this cool research project at an age when I was ... well, we won't get into that ... but here's how; when she was 13, LeBlanc read an article about Eddy Carmack, a Canadian oceanographer conducting drift bottle research off the coast of Brazil.

So she got in touch with with him and asked how she could start doing drift bottle research too. Eddy told her to contact the Canadian Coast Guard, which agreed(!) to drop bottles for her from the icebreaker CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent - shameless plug for companies doing a nice thing: the 100 percent biodegradable bottles were donated by Sleeman Breweries - double bonus, the Sleeman family were booze runners during Prohibition (the Canadian version first) so he knew how to use a Thompson.


So LeBlance wrote notes saying why the bottles were being dropped and who to contact if they were found, corking and coating each one with wax to make a waterproof seal. 



For two years, the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent’s crew tossed nearly 600 of LeBlanc's bottles into the Arctic Ocean but finally in 2009, during the International Polar Year, Youth Science Canada program selected a lucky student (LeBlanc) to join the crew of the research ship CCGS Amundsen  and she got the chance to throw them overboard herself.

What was that like?   Being seasick and shivering through -40º C temperatures can't be all that great but she got to hang out with oceanographers and talk about their work - and eat some caribou.

Don't tell Greenpeace about that last part.


Commanding Officer Anthony Potts, CCGS Louis St.Laurent, and Bonita LeBlanc at the beginning of her drift bottle project in 2006.  Photo: Natalie Cordiner / Norman LeBlanc

So what was the result?

Only four percent of all drift bottles are ever found - most sink, get buried in sand or wash up in a spot where people never find them.  Of the hundreds of bottles from LeBlanc’s first batch, seven have been found—three on Baffin Island, two in Ireland, one in England and one in Iceland.  It normally takes a  few years for a bottle to make its way to shore so her most recent bottles are still floating somewhere in the ocean.


http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records/modern_society/people_and_places/oldest_message_in_a_bottle.aspx

Oldest Message in a Bottle
	WHO: WHAT: 92 years 229 days WHERE: Shetland, UK WHEN: December 10, 2006

The oldest message in a bottle spent 92 years 229 days at sea. A bottom drift bottle, numbered 423B, was released at 60º 50'N 00º 38'W on 25 April 1914 and recovered by fisherman, Mark Anderson of Bixter, Shetland, UK, at 60º 50'N 00º 37'W on December 10, 2006.




MORE INFO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_in_a_bottle


OTHER IDEAS
Message in a Bottle Becomes Dream Honeymoon
Tortuga Rum Promotion Redeemed in Cayman Islands After 19 Years 

A young Ingleside, Texas police officer found a message in a bottle that was put in the ocean nearly 20 years ago. The message led to Caribbean adventure and pirate treasure: a dream honeymoon trip to the Cayman Islands and a case of Tortuga rum. Here's how the story unfolds:
On June 13, 1987 in the Cayman Islands, Robert Hamaty, founder of the then newly started Tortuga Rum Company and some friends put 12 rum bottles into the ocean. They had emptied the rum and put in notes for a free (one way) plane trip on Cayman Airways to come to Grand Cayman to claim a case of Tortuga Rum, and stay at the Sunset House Hotel. Within the next 18 months, 4 people claimed their prizes, finding the bottles on South Padre Island TX. It was assumed that the other bottles were lost at sea. In April 2003 while looking for some bait near Conn Brown Harbor in Aransas Pass, John Reed discovered a bottle bobbing in the roots of a mangrove. Inside were three certificates -- from Cayman Airways, Sunset House and the Tortuga Rum Company explaining the prize. His brother, then a reporter for the Taylor Daily Press (TX) contacted and interviewed Hamaty for a story. Then no one heard from the Reed family for another three years. John had no time to go to the Caymans and gave the prize to his parents. They were moving and put the certificates in a safe in hopes that someday they or someone could take the trip. This June, Reed's parents contacted Hamaty to make sure the offer would still be honored after all these years. They wanted to give the prize back to their son for his honeymoon. Reed, now 26 years old, married Stephanie Smith, age 21 in Rockport, TX on Friday July 21. The young couple traded in those tattered certificates found in a Tortuga rum bottle for their dream honeymoon. Cayman Airways changed their tickets to round trip, first class for two. The Sunset House extended their stay to five nights and Budget of Grand Cayman provided a free rental car. The Cayman Department of Tourism arranged a horse-drawn carriage ride at sunset to dinner at the Grand Old House and several other local restaurants provided free meals during their stay. Tortuga and the Hamaty family welcomed the Reeds and coordinated all the logistics.	Reed's Receive Tortuga Rum
Ironically, this spring, Tortuga Rums were introduced into the US market for the first time, so John Reed did not need to pick up his case of rum in the Caymans. The importer, Majestic Distilling arranged for a personal delivery in Corpus Christi Texas. Another irony, Hamaty's son Basil is a First Officer for Cayman Airways and flew on the flight crew for the Houston to Grand Cayman route that the Reeds took on their honeymoon. It's a Caribbean, dream-come-true adventure - all from a message in a bottle dropped in the ocean so many years before. As John Reed concluded following their fabulous trip," Who would have thought you could squeeze so much fun and fond memories into one Tortuga Rum bottle! " Tortuga Rums now are available in 35 states. Tortuga Gold Rum and Tortuga Light Rum are available in 1.75, liter and 750ml bottles. Tortuga Banana Rum, Coconut Rum and Spiced Rum will be introduced later in the year. Maryland's oldest independent distillery, Majestic Distilling Company was founded in 1943. The company offers quality products and packaging at consumer friendly pricing with unprecedented service to its wholesale network. See www.majesticdistilling.com Tortuga Rum Company, Ltd. was founded by Robert Hamaty, a captain for Cayman Airways and his wife Carlene, an in-flight supervisor. They watched tourists toting home bottles of rum as vacation souvenirs - even from islands where sugar cane, the main ingredient for rum, wasn't grown. A business idea was born and the Hamatys introduced Tortuga as the Cayman Islands first private label rum in 1984. Today, this family owned and operated company is the largest duty-free liquor business in the Cayman Islands. Its premium and flavored Tortuga Rums are special blends of Jamaican and Barbados rums and a favorite souvenir of the millions of cruise passengers and other tourists who visit the Caymans each year. The company also is known for its world famous Tortuga Caribbean Rum Cakes, the #1 export of the Cayman Islands. The Reed's in Cayman Islands THEME VARIATION - SENDING BALLOON MAILhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_mail

US Joins Effort to Produce Better Arctic Nautical Maps

Yesterday, October 6, the United States officially joined an international initiative whose main objective is the creation of better, more accurate nautical maps for the Arctic region. 

At a meeting that was held in Ottawa, Canada, representatives from the states that border the Arctic – the Russian Federation, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway – signed into existence a new regulatory body.


The Arctic Regional Hydrographic Commission will be responsible for regulating traffic through the Arctic Ocean, which is now beginning to suffer important transformation due to global warming.

The phenomenon is causing more ice to melt each year at the North Pole, which clears up new trading routes, as well as lands that can be exploited for natural resources.

Since 2005, the amount of ship traffic in the Arctic Ocean has more than doubled, which is the clearest indicator possible that climate change is actually taking place as we speak.

Shipping companies, which handle about 90 percent of the world's commerce, are ecstatic about the possibility of sending merchandise through the Arctic rather than through the Atlantic.

This could save a lot of money, time and fuel, and so companies with interests in this field are now asking of their respective governments to become involved in this effort to map the Arctic sea floor.

“As vessel traffic increases, inexperience with navigating in the challenging conditions of the Arctic can create real dangers,” explains Capt. John Lowell.

“Currently, charting data in much of the Arctic is woefully out of date or nonexistent. Inadequate charts pose a significant risk for marine safety, potentially leading to loss of life or environmental disaster, as evidenced by recent vessel groundings,” he adds.

Lowell is the director of the NOAA Office of Coast Survey, and also a US national hydrographer. He explains that creating such maps could be vital for the national economy in America.

“The establishment of the Arctic Regional Hydrographic Commission will help build synergy among the Arctic Coastal States to ensure safety of life at sea, assist in protecting the increasingly fragile Arctic ecosystem and support the maritime economy,” the Captain says.

The US delegation to the meeting was led by experts from the Office of Coast Survey at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Representatives from the Naval Oceanographic Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency were also present at the talks.

Eric Soares Sea Kayaking Adventures

Eric Soares is co-founder of and commander in the Tsunami Rangers ocean adventure kayak team, known for exploring surf zones, rock gardens, and sea caves on the exposed Pacific Northwest Coast. The Tsunami Rangers started in 1985 and sponsored the infamous Sea Gypsy Race at Miramar Beach for 20 years. Eric was the instigator and organizer of the race.

Eric Soares at play in a rock garden in Moss Beach, California (photo by Michael Powers)

Eric has written over 50 articles on kayaking, including seminal works on kayak surfing, rock garden techniques, rough water night paddling, and sea caving. Eric developed Hand Signals for Sea Kayakers, used by thousands of paddlers around the world, and the Sea Conditions Rating System, based on the River Rating System. Commander Soares coauthored EXTREME SEA KAYAKING with Michael Powers, published in 1999. Soares’ most recent publication is a book of sea kayaking tales called CONFESSIONS OF A WAVE WARRIOR, published in 2010. Soares also wrote The Tao of Sea Kayaking, published in WAVELENGTH magazine in Summer, 2009.

Eric Soares (foreground) and Michael Powers break through a wave at Big Sur, California (photo by Gordon Brown)

He has produced and starred in four documentary adventure sea kayaking videos, including the award-winning ADVENTURES OF THE TSUNAMI RANGERS, which took Best in Show at the Whitewater Paddling Festival in 1989. Soares’ DVD called THE TSUNAMI RANGERS’ GREATEST HITS was featured in 2006 at the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival and the British Columbia Paddlefest in Vancouver, B.C.

Commander Soares, along with fellow Tsunami Rangers, has been featured on several TV shows and networks, including National Geographic Explorer, Outdoor Life Network, MTV, the Discovery Channel, and most recently, the History Channel.

Eric offers clinics on HOW TO PADDLE THE EXPOSED COAST to experienced kayakers. Eric and the Rangers give slide shows and talks at sea kayaking symposia throughout the U.S. In September 2008, Soares presented the multimedia slide show TSUNAMI RANGER SEA TALES at the West Coast Sea Kayaking Symposium in Port Townsend, Washington, and presented it again in Auckland, New Zealand in 2010. Soares and Captain Jim Kakuk are currently writing a book on advanced sea kayaking skills called THE TSUNAMI RANGERS HANDBOOK. When not kayaking, Soares is a mild-mannered, retired marketing professor from California State University and enjoys swimming and practicing jujitsu, tai chi, and other martial arts.

http://tsunamirangers.com/about/

Related Posts:

• California Kayaker Magazine
• Sea Kayaking Big Sur — The Next Tsunami Rangers Adventure
• Eric Soares’s Latest Book
• Tsunami Rangers Paddle Big Sur
• Sea Cave Safety (part two)

Sea-kayaking in the Arctic boosts the Adventure

Polar sea-kayaking is the ultimate experience for paddlers - crystal clear water, unique wildlife and beautiful castles of ice. A little experience required

For some travelers the excitement of participating in an expedition to the polar regions is not enough. They need an extra boost of adrenaline. Those adventure seekers opt to add camping, mountaineering, cross-country skiing or sea-kayaking to their adventure vacation in the Arctic or Antarctica.

What is the difference between a Whitewater Kayak and Sea-kayak?

A kayak is a small boat originally designed by the Inuit of the Arctic. Paddlers propel the boat by a double-bladed paddle. The blades are offset slightly from each other. A sea-kayak, unlike a whitewater kayak, is designed for open water. Most Antarctic expedition operators that offer a sea-kayaking option provide single or tandem kayaks for their paddlers.

A safety conscious expedition cruise company provides a dry training session on board prior to the first paddle. When the kayaks are launched a Zodiac or some other stable craft accompanies the flotilla to act as a rescue boat.

Inexperienced Paddlers can Kayak in the Arctic or Antarctica

Travelers to the Arctic or Antarctica who have never paddled a kayak could begin their new past-time in the what some consider the ultimate sea-kayaking destination. When sailing with Quark Expeditions, the novices must prove they have practiced an emergency wet exit. That can be accomplished prior to leaving home in a swimming pool under the supervision of a kayak master.

Sea-kayaking as a Platform for Wildlife Watching

Despite their cute and cuddly appearance, polar bears are dangerous and they are excellent swimmers. So when polar bears are present the kayaks may be pulled from the water. Arctic bird-watching, however, is excellent from the boats.

In the Antarctic Peninsula, penguins, seals and whales have been known to swim around and under kayaks. When wildlife is nearby kayakers may be asked to stow their paddles and float while observing the antics of the local residents. Safety, however, is first. If, in the judgment of the safety crew, the situation is dangerous, paddlers will be directed to return to the ship.

How much does Sea-kayaking Cost in the Polar Regions?

Expect to pay an additional $500 to $900 per person for the privilege of kayaking in the polar regions. That includes the use of all the equipment required, and the leadership of an experienced kayak guide, plus the safety boat and personnel. Expect to kayak between 3 and 5 times during an expedition. While kayakers paddle the rest of the expedition members will be hiking or cruising in Zodiacs. Travelers should be aware that if they choose a sea-kayaking option they may miss other activities.

Read more at Suite101: Sea-kayaking in the Arctic or Antarctica boosts the Adventure http://www.suite101.com/content/sea-kayaking-in-the-arctic-or-antarctica-boosts-the-adventure-a293613#ixzz11ZmZZx1P

Top 10 highs and lows of an expedition across Iceland

A favourite adventurer of ours is Alastair Humphreys, who has recently returned from an unsupported crossing of Iceland with his photographer mate Chris Herwig.  Carrying 40kg packs containing all of the food they needed, camping gear, and equipment for both glacier crossing and packrafting, Alistair and Chris crossed Iceland, trekking inland from Iceland’s north coast and then paddling the length of Iceland’s longest river to the Southern coast and Atlantic Ocean.

Here Alistair shares with us his top ten highs and lows of their 24 day trip.

1. Discovering that one of the most varied, deserted, beautiful wildernesses I have ever been to is only 3 hours away from London with Iceland Express.

2. Carrying 25 days of food meant serious rationing. Eating just 2000 calories a day meant that I was permanently very hungry.

3. Getting up close to Eyjafjallajökull volcano which caused such chaos earlier this year.

4. On the rare occasions when it was not raining or very windy, clouds of flies would rise from nowhere and fly into our noses, ears, eyes, and mouth.

5. The sources of the two rivers we paddled: one flowing out from beneath a glacier, the other gushing boiling hot from the side of a volcano.

6. Trekking hundreds of miles carrying a brutally heavy (40kg) backpack.

7. Inflating  the packrafts and beginning to paddle downstream. Fun, fast, and no more carrying  those heavy packs!

8. Capsizing in major whitewater rapids in the depths of a canyon. And later realising that my waterproof video camera had not even recorded the drama!

9. Wallowing in a hot spring beneath the midnight sun.

10. Seeing the river in front of us open out into the brown waves of the Atlantic Ocean: the end of a successful, exciting, fascinating journey across Iceland.

Read Alistair’s brilliantly entertaining full diary of his Icelandic adventureand I challenge you not to want to experience the 4-day Laugavegur trek(which he undertakes as part of this trip) for yourself. Iceland looks incredible.

Fancy an adventure of your own?

The disappearing world of the last Arctic hunters - Inughuit

A narwhal hunter at Inglefield Fjord near Qaanaaq. Photograph: Alamy

Living in the most northern permanently inhabited settlements in the world, the Inughuit people, or polar Eskimos as they are often known, have eked out an existence in this Arctic desert in the north-west corner of Greenland for centuries. The Inughuit are one of the smallest indigenous groups in the world, with a population of just 800 spread across the four settlements that make up the Thule region.

A thousand miles away from the capital, Nuuk, and occupying an unfeasibly remote corner of our world, the Inughuit enjoy their own distinct subculture based on the hunting of marine mammals. Unlike other Inuit populations across the Arctic, the Inughuit have maintained where possible their ancient way of life, using kayaks and harpoons to hunt narwhal and travelling by dog-sled in winter.

This unique way of life is now under threat. A tiny society whose basis is just a half dozen families, some of whom are descendants of polar explorers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, say they are being "squeezed" out of existence. Draconian hunting quotas have been imposed by politicians in the south, many of whom have never ventured this far north. The hunting restrictions have pushed up the cost of sea mammals and some Inughuit are switching to a western diet of imported food.

Even if they can afford to eat their traditional diet, certain environmental groups advise them not to do so. The levels of mercury in some marine mammals are thought to pose a health hazard, and the risks of radioactive contamination from the nearby nuclear accident in 1968, when a US Air Force B-52 crash-landed with four hydrogen bombs on board, are still unknown.

The one-price policy that used to operate across Greenland, effectively subsidising the more remote settlements, has also been abolished, and the result is that the cost of living has rocketed. Local people believe the government, which has self-rule within Denmark's small commonwealth, has a hidden agenda to force out the people in the most remote communities, creating three or four urban centres in Greenland and reducing the cost of servicing such isolated settlements.

The Inughuit, however, are already a people in exile. Qaanaaq, by far the largest Inughuit settlement, was established in 1953, when the Inughuit people were given three days to leave their ancient homeland in Uummannaq, 150km (90 miles) to the south to make way for the controversial US air base at Thule. But now these displaced people face a new and unprecedented threat to their culture: global warming.

My journey to Greenland took me through pretty, picture-postcard Ilulissat in the south. Here, small amphitheatres of ice seemed to go nowhere, just sitting and collecting dirt, before sinking into oblivion. As we skirted the ice sheet, heading northwards, it seemed grey and thinning. Lakes appeared all over the ice, a tragic testament to the all too rapidly changing natural environment. It is a picture of transition, and a disturbing one: it speaks dislocation and a sense of foreboding.

A woman who has spent nearly all her life in Qaanaaq stands in my green prefabricated wooden hut, on the vast polar bear and musk-oxen skins that cover the floor. Dried, pungent blubber sits on the racks outside. Looking out across Ingelfield Bay and the whale-shaped Herbert Island, towards the exploding icebergs that sit like vast lumps of polystyrene in the Murchison Sound, there is a sadness in her eyes: "Twenty years ago, my children used to go skating on the ice at this time of the year. Just 15 years ago, the sea ice in the bay was up to three metres thick. Last year, the ice was so thin that a young hunter and his dog team of 12 fell through to their deaths. If the sea ice goes completely, there will be no need for the dogs [huskies] and our culture will disappear."

It is late September in the High Arctic, the outside temperature is -3C and there is little hope of the sea ice forming any time soon. Local hunters tell me they know it is warmer than it used to be because the dogs' breath used to be more dense in the cold. While global warming may be toasted in southern Greenland, where farmers see many benefits, it is unequivocally bad news for this tiny indigenous group.

Not only has global warming made hunting considerably more dangerous, it has also halved the hunting season. In the summer months the Inughuit hunt narwhal deep within Ingelfield Bay, using kayaks and harpoons. The narwhal leave the bay in September. The Inughuit used to start hunting seal with dog-sled at this time of the year, but that is no longer possible as the sea has not yet frozen over. A couple of years ago, the sea ice did not form at all until December and was gone again in March. In October, November and December, when the settlement is plunged into 24-hour darkness, there are few options for the hunters. The narwhal do not arrive until May, but by then the sea ice is long gone.

Like many Inughuit, this woman has relatives in the Canadian Arctic, where the Inughuit are originally from: "Previously, we used to travel across the Smith Sound to Canada on dog-sled [a distance of 40km]. Now that journey is impossible because the sea ice has disappeared."

Global warming has a human cost too, tearing families apart. To visit their Canadian relatives, these people would now have to fly to Copenhagen 4,000km away then across the Atlantic to Montreal and up from there. Air travel is prohibitively expensive in Greenland and such a journey would cost several thousand pounds, a price very few can afford. Historically, the Inughuit people were semi-nomadic, moving between the different settlements at certain times of the year for hunting purposes and to visit family.

The disappearing ice has meant that it is now too dangerous to visit the outer settlements on dog-sled, but what ice remains means that travel by boat is not an option either. Often, the only alternative is a very expensive helicopter trip. The sense of shrinking space here is almost tangible.

The threat of global warming to their traditional hunting life, alongside a host of political factors, has left the Inughuit believing that their current settlements will not be here in 15 years' time, that people will relocate southwards, and will assimilate into a broader Inuit culture. Young people, recognising that their parents are no longer able to make a living from hunting alone, are leaving the community to live a very different life in modern flats in Nuuk. Last week Moriusaq, the smallest of the Inughuit settlements, was finally closed and the others are looking increasingly endangered.

Fascinated by the Far North since I was a small child, it was about 10 years ago when I discovered the Inughuit through my reading of a book called The Snow People by Marie Herbert. This tiny Arctic community that insisted on maintaining its ancient way of life at the top of the world struck me as remarkable, and I decided I wanted to visit these people. More recently, in Cambridge, I came to understand how endangered this culture and their language was.

It is widely understood how global warming is threatening the natural environment (not least here in Greenland, with the vast iceberg that broke off recently from the nearby Petermann glacier), but the Inughuit represent a bona fide example of how climate change impacts on local cultures.

If the Inughuit are forced to leave their ancient homeland, it is likely that the language of these Arctic hunters will disappear. With it, their already endangered ancient spoken traditions – a rich depository of indigenous cultural knowledge about how they relate to the land, sea and ice, bound up in stories, myths and folklore – will also be lost.

The Inughuit are immensely proud of their language, Inuktun. While strictly speaking a dialect of Greenlandic, Inuktun is much closer to some of the Canadian Inuit dialects and the phonology is quite distinct from Standard West Greenlandic.

Working with the last handful of storytellers, I have come here to document their stories and narratives in the old Inuktun language and hope that this will act as a record of this unique and endangered culture. Rather than writing a grammar or dictionary, it is hoped that an "Ethnography of Speaking" will show how their language and culture are interconnected and how their knowledge and sociocultural experience are transmitted and performed through the filter of these spoken traditions. The stories, narratives and myths that underpin the ancient Inughuit culture will be recorded, digitised and ultimately returned to the community.

One elderly Inughuit tells me this is our last chance: "We inherited our language from our ancestors. If we lose it without record, future generations will know nothing about their rich past."

With 16 others and a small mountain of freight as co-passengers, I arrived in the community aboard a Dash 7 turboprop aircraft just over a month ago. Clouds lingered just above the brightly coloured wooden houses. Beneath were the world's most northerly people, living in a quite implausible environment.

My very first impression was the otherworldliness of the place: after four-and-a-half hours of flying up the west Greenland coast with nothing to see but bare ancient rock, meandering glaciers licking the horizon and icebergs littering the fjords, this dry polar desert with its omnipresent rocks and boulders and lack of vegetation seemed completely out of place. Sitting just 960km from the north pole, I felt as if I had come to a different world altogether rather than to the top of my own.

I had often speculated as to how I would be received into this community, and the result was quite unexpected. But I'll save that for my next dispatch…

Stephen Pax Leonard is an anthropological linguist at the Scott Polar Research Institute and research fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He will be living with the Inughuit people for 12 months. His research is funded by the British Academy and the World Oral Literature Project in Cambridge.

Bottles dropped to uncork secrets of ocean

 

Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientist organizes drift bottle project, charts surface currents and how they can carry things along

 

 

 

Jenelle Reece and her schoolmates had just finished tossing hundreds of beer bottles overboard when a humpback and her calf swam up for a friendly encounter.

The whales hung around for close to an hour, splashing their mottled flippers and sidling up so close the students could almost touch their huge heads. Then the humpbacks, like the beer bottles, headed for parts unknown.

"Just unbelievable," says Ernie Hill, principal of the school in Hartley Bay, a remote first nations village on British Columbia's Central Coast, who welcomed a chance for his students to participate in a growing global experiment.

The drift bottle project, led by federal scientist Eddy Carmack at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, is charting surface currents and how they can carry things along -- be it beer bottles, young salmon or spilled oil.

Carmack's growing army of volunteers from Greenland to B.C. has dropped more than 4,500 bottles since 2000. Each one carries a message saying when and where it was tossed and asking the finder to contact Carmack's team.

Some bottles beach within days, many sink and the ones that meet their demise on rocks "return to the earth," says Carmack, as the glass, paper and cork break down.

But others make incredible journeys.

One far-flung "drifter" turned up in Puerto Rico after travelling about 15,000 kilometres -- almost a third of the way around the Earth -- from where it was dropped near Baffin Island four years earlier. Another 50 bottles tossed off icebreakers and ships in Canada's north slipped out

of the Arctic by Greenland, and were swept across the Atlantic, bobbing along at five to 10 kilometres a day, before making landfall in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and Denmark.

Carmack says the bottles do "a pretty good job of mimicking anything that is floating in the surface waters."

This fall's 500-bottle drop in B.C. waters helps underscore how poorly understood the currents are off the rugged Central Coast -- and the danger posed by plans to ship Alberta's crude oil to Asia and the United States, says Hill, who is also a hereditary chief in Hartley Bay.

The community, accessible by boat and air, is part of the growing coalition opposed to Enbridge Inc.'s proposed Northern Gateway project to pipe crude from Alberta's oilsands to a container terminal in Kitimat, where more than 200 supertankers a year would be filled and head down a long channel passing within sight of Hartley Bay.

"It would be the end to our way of life," says Hill, noting the waters are home to killer, humpback and fin whales, five species of salmon and a bounty that has sustained aboriginal people for eons.

Carmack says there is plenty to learn about currents and the "globally unique" waters on the Central Coast. But he stresses the B.C. bottle drop is not a protest against Enbridge's supertankers.

"The bottles don't say 'Stop the oil tankers,'" says Carmack, a senior scientist at the federal Institute of Ocean Sciences outside Victoria. "Our group is not taking a stand."

"This is an experiment, and it's one the public can participate in, that can add to the body of knowledge that we need to make better decisions," says Carmack, who has long championed "fish boat" or "folk" science projects that make ocean research relevant to communities and young people.

While the drift bottle project "wouldn't pass a lot of highbrow scientific scrutiny," Carmack says the bottles can go where mainstream research won't, or can't, because of prohibitive costs.

"It's really hard to study surface currents," says Carmack, a veteran of dozens of scientific cruises to the Arctic on Canadian Coast Guard vessels. "You have a vast area and you're looking at instruments [current metres] that cost maybe $10,000 each."

The bottles are cheap and, as he puts it, "go with the flow." So does his team of volunteers, which includes hundred of students, coast guard captains who have facilitated the drops and a retrieval crew that includes Inuit hunters, fishers in Norway, beachcombers in the tropics and an Alaskan couple who asked for a case of beer before revealing where they found a bottle. (They eventually relented, says federal researcher Helen Drost, keeper of the bottle log.)

For the B.C. drop, the folks at the Litehouse Brewing Company donated the 500 brown bottles; a volunteer crew in Victoria rolled up the messages and corked the bottles, and mariner Brian Falconer of the nonprofit Raincoast Conservation Foundation stowed the bottles on board his 21-metre sloop, the Achiever, for the cruise up the Central Coast.

Last week, Falconer sailed into Hartley Bay to pick up students and teachers to help with the toss.

As part of the growing project, Hill says the 34 students in Hartley Bay School are planning to connect with a community in Greenland, which will stash messages made by his students into some of the 500 bottles to be dropped into Baffin Bay.

Hill says the 2006 sinking of BC Ferries' Queen of the North showed how little is known about Canada's treacherous West Coast waters. The people of Hartley Bay answered the distress call when the ferry with 101 people on board ran aground, racing out in small boats in the dead of night to pick up survivors.

Months later, Hill says, oil from the sunken ferry surfaced and unexpectedly contaminated clam beds. It was four years before the community could harvest in the main clam bed again, says Hill, noting Enbridge's tankers could spill far more oil. "We'd like to have a better idea where the oil would go," he says.

While many of the 500 bottles will likely wash ashore in B.C. and Alaska, Carmack says it's possible some will end up crossing the Atlantic via the Arctic before returning to the Pacific.

"A bottle that you toss in off our West Coast could easily follow the coastline of Alaska, slip into the Arctic Ocean, go around the north end of North America, come out in Baffin Bay and join the Gulf Stream and head for Norway," says Carmack, noting how the currents could then sweep a bottle across the Russian side of the Arctic and back down through Bering Strait.

"It could," he says, "go all the way around."