PUHI — The bottle floated around the Pacific Ocean for 14 years. Zuri Pommerenk was 10 years old and going to school at Kilauea School when the bottle was released. “We just got word two weeks ago that his bottle
PUHI — The bottle floated around the Pacific Ocean for 14 years.
Zuri Pommerenk was 10 years old and going to school at Kilauea School when the bottle was released.
“We just got word two weeks ago that his bottle was found at Coos Bay, Oregon,” said Steve Soltysik, supervising the wax sealing of messages by Island School students at the campus here Wednesday.
That bottle was one of 433 bottles released in November, 1996, by the crew aboard the Hokule‘a, the Hawai‘i sailing canoe, during one of its interisland visits to Kaua‘i.
All of the messages were in wine bottles, assembled and sealed with wax by grade-school students, states an explanation piece of the display available for viewing at the Learning Resource Center at Kaua‘i Community College for at least another month, Soltysik said.
Wednesday afternoon, fourth- and fifth-grade students at Island School were busy placing their messages in wine bottles, struggling to insert corks, then having fun applying the final sealing coats of wax under Soltysik’s supervision.
Unlike plastic, the wine bottles are made from quartz sand that break up into tiny pieces of quartz and return to Mother Earth as part of natural sediment, Soltysik said.
The wax is from recycled crayons that are melted down and used to seal the cork, ensuring the contents won’t become victims of water and sea animals.
Soltysik said he started releasing messages in 1985 on a cruise from Catalina to Hilo. Since those first messages, six of which have come back from finders, he said kids really enjoy this type of hands-on activity.
“This project is to get them excited about other countries, the wind and currents, and to think about the world beyond this little island,” Soltysik said. “We are all connected on this Planet Earth.”
The bottles worked on by the Island School students will join bottles worked on by students at the Kawaikini New Century Public Charter School, with about 65 bottles scheduled to be released about 10 to 15 miles off Kaua‘i.
Once released, Soltysik said it takes about a year or two before the first ones start appearing.
“We’ve had 32 returns from the 433 released in 1996,” Soltysik said. “Some are from areas around Kaua‘i, Lana‘i, O‘ahu, but we’ve had bottles coming back from the Philippines, Japan, Saipan, and this latest one from Oregon.”
In one extreme case, a finder found the note, but no bottle on the Big Island, Soltysik said, pointing to the preserved note in a binder.
“It was water-soaked, but it survived,” Soltysik said.
The display at the LRC pinpoints the locations of where the bottles were found and provides more in-depth analysis about the currents and the routes the bottles took before being found.
Soltysik, an instructor for about 40 years, said he also released bottles in the Atlantic Ocean, with about 16 bottles coming back via responses from finders.
“If you get a 7 percent on returns that’s good,” Soltysik said.
Meghan Walsh, writing for The World newspaper in Coos Bay, Ore., said the discovery of the bottle by Bandon resident Ken Connelly got a fifth-grade class excited enough to want to do their own release with the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology volunteering to take the sealed Oregon notes about 10 nautical miles out to sea, where new journeys will begin.
The World and The Garden Island are both owned by Lee Enterprises.
Helen Farr, a fifth-grade teacher at Millieoma Intermediate School, tracked Soltysik to KCC, and had her students writing back (via sealed bottles).
“Everyone gets excited when they find a message in a bottle,” Soltysik said.
