HAVE YOU SEEN ANY OF THESE BOTTLES? 



EACH BOTTLE CONTAINS 

 SOME SAND BALLAST AND 

 A CARD LIKE THIS=^ 



ivmy TWO Of thke months, the Honolulu 



BI0L06ICAL LABOHATOJtY IS glLEASINS APPfOtlMATELY ^1.000 OF THESE DglFT BOTTLES INTO 

 THE OCEAN NEAK THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS TO STUDY THE CUKKENTS IN THE MID-PACIFIC. PLEASE 

 KOKUA. IF YOU FIND ANY OF THE DglFT BOTTLES MAIL THE ENCLOSED POSTASE-FKEE CAHD. 

 PLEASE SEND ALL THE CAKDS YOU FIND. 



Figure 1. 



-Poster showing drift: boccle aiid enclosed card, 

 public buildings to alert potential finders. 



These posters were placed In schools and other 



DESCRIPTION OF BOTTLES 

 AND CARDS 



Drift bottles were used initially, but were 

 gradually replaced by drift cards during 1961. 

 The drift bottle consisted of an 8-ounce clear 

 glass bottle, ballasted with sand so that an inch 

 of the neck protruded above the water (fig. 1). 

 Cards were enclosed which contained Instruc- 

 tions to the finder in English, Spanish, and 

 Japanese, with a postcard attached which could 

 be torn off for mailing (fig. 1). The postcards 

 were numbered, postage paid, and self-addressed 

 with blank spaces for the name and address of 

 the finder and the time and place of recovery. 

 The back of the card was printed with wide Inter- 

 national Orange stripes to catch attention. These 

 cards were folded up and wrapped once with 

 pressure-sensitive tape to facilitate insertion in 

 the bottle and to permit the finder to remove the 

 card easily. The bottles were sealed with waxed 

 corks. 



In 1962 some experiments with drift cards 

 sealed in plastic envelopes showed that the cards 

 performed as well as the bottles and were much 

 more convenient to store and use. The drift card 

 consisted of a numbered, bright red postcard 

 similar to that used in the bottles, but with the 

 instructions to the finder printed on the back of 

 the card (fig. 2). A weight was enclosed to make 

 the card float vertically in the water so that its 



movements, like those of the bottles, would 

 depend primarily on the currents in the upper- 

 most 6 inches of the water column. The drift 

 cards were sealed in polyethylene bags and then 

 packaged in flimsy waxed-paper bags, in groups 

 of 20, to ensure control of the serial number 

 sequence and the number of cards per release; 

 the waxed-paper bags were selected for their 

 ability to come apart in the water in a minimum 

 time, usually about 2 to 3 minutes. 



The costper bottle was estimated at 10 cents; 

 the drift cards cost 11 cents each. 



SI 



Jll! 



ill? 





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Figure 2. "Drift card used In this study. 



