Message in a bottle travels from Britain to New Zealand

BRITAIN: A six-year-old girl who threw a message in a bottle out to sea off the coast of northeast Scotland in the hope that it might be found in Scandanavia was delighted to learn that it had been discovered on the other side of the world, in New Zealand, The Independent said on Friday.

Keely Reid, who threw the plastic bottle to sea while on holiday with her grandparents in Scotland, received a letter from fellow six-year-old James Wilson of Whangamata, on the north island of New Zealand, saying he had received it.

"It is brilliant, this bottle travelled further than I ever have," she was quoted as saying in The Independent.

But the travels of the bottle itself have befuddled scientists - it covered more than 20,000 miles (32,200 kilometres) in just 47 days, at an estimated 425 miles per day, or 18 miles per hour.

That compares to a modern day luxury cruise from Britian to New Zealand, which The Independent said could take up to 40 days.

The newspaper quoted Bill Turrell, a scientist at the Fisheries Research Station lab in Aberdeen, northeast Scotland, as saying: "As a scientist I would usually hedge my bets and leave room for some possibility but there is absolutely no way the bottle could have made it to New Zealand on its own, it must have been picked up by somebody."

LONDON, Friday, AFP