DRIFT BOTTLES.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 244, 28 September 1922, Page 5

DRIFT BOTTLES.

INTERESTING EXPERIMENTS IN THE SOUTH. Since January, 1920, when the liberation of hotties off Otago Heads was commenced, 464 bottles have been set free, states the annual report of the Marine Department. Of these 60 have been picked up. and their contained papers have been returned to the secretary of the board. This represents 12.9 per c&nt. of the whole number, and considering the fact that all bottles liberated more than six miles from the heads drift north (as far as Wellington), and north-east (three having been returned from the Chatham Islai ds), and that the chances of the hotties being picked up on sandy beaches seem relatively small, we consider the results both interesting and satisfactory. In selecting a site for the fish-hatcherv and biological station prior to ,1904, a strong reason advance for choosing Otago Harbour was that owing to the occurrence of a north-easterly current along the coast anything set frfce in the ocean there would almost certainly tend to go up the coast in a northerly direction. This drift-bottle experiment has shown the accuracy of the forecast. It is not intended to carry this experiment further. ,