March 14, 2014 — A recent news article about a message in a bottle caught my attention. Drift bottles were released during the last cruise of the Albatross IV in November 2008. One of the bottles ended up in the Azores in 2009, another washed ashore in 2011 on St. Lucia in the Caribbean.
But this recent news involved the Albatross III, which conducted 128 fisheries and oceanographic research cruises in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean during its service from 1948 to 1959. Like the finding in 2009 of an Albatross IV drift bottle in the Azores (see related links), there is a fascinating story attached to the Albatross III and this latest drift bottle tale.
As many readers may already know, a drift bottle was found on Sable Island, about 190 miles southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on January 20, 2014. Warren Joyce, a biologist working at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, found the bottle while conducting research on gray seals. The bottle was numbered and inside had a paper and postcard. According to an online article published by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), an internet search by Joyce traced the bottle back to WHOI and to scientist Dean Bumpus, who tracked currents in the western North Atlantic over several decades using surface drift bottles and mushroom-shaped seabed drifters (see related links).
But how was the Albatross III involved in this tale? And were other fisheries research vessels involved in drift bottle studies? With the help of Nancy McHugh of the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Ecosystems Surveys Branch and Jim Manning of the Oceanography Branch, we examined cruise files and drift bottle records and found much more to the story.
The bottle recovered on Sable Island was released on Albatross III Cruise No. 73, which departed Woods Hole on April 17, 1956 to sample haddock eggs and larvae on Georges Bank and in the Gulf of Maine and to also collect hydrographic data. The science party comprised John B. Colton, Jr. as “chief of party” and biologists Donald B. Foster and David Miller, all from the fisheries service.
The bottle was one of 12 launched on April 26, 1956. In all, 800 drift bottles were released from the Albatross III at various locations during cruise 73 before the ship returned to Woods Hole on April 28. If that many bottles were released on one cruise, were drift bottles released on other Albatross III cruises, and if so, for what purpose?
Further investigation revealed that thousands of drift bottles were released from the Albatross III during cruises in 1953, 1955, and 1956 to determine the distribution of haddock eggs and larvae and to identify general circulation patterns of water in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank regions.These cruises revealed that the area of maximum haddock spawning – the northeast part of Georges Bank – coincided with the area of minimum drift bottle returns. Haddock eggs and larvae spawned on the northeastern part of Georges Bank could therefore be transported out of the area by water currents and lost to the fishery (see related links for cruise 73 information).
“Cruise reports and data logs indicated that vast numbers of drift bottles were released over several decades by our ships, primarily the Albatross III, but also several other vessels,” said Nancy McHugh. “Our filing cabinets of data are truly a gold mine of information and provide yet another interesting window to the past.”
Press releases in the cruise files also revealed a joint research project between the Woods Hole Fisheries Laboratory, then part of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and WHOI. According to a March 21, 1957 press release, transponding drift buoys developed by WHOI and drift bottles were to be released from the Albatross III on Georges Bank. Another press release issued April 25, 1957 noted that the buoys would follow the drift of water masses containing developing haddock eggs to be sampled during the annual survey of haddock spawning.
The 1957 project, conducted on the northeast part of Georges Bank, involved both drift bottle releases and the release of four transponding drift buoys in the area of maximum haddock spawning. The spar buoys, 19 feet long and six inches in diameter and painted international orange, were used to study non-tidal currents on Georges Bank by drifting for about nine weeks. The buoys floated vertically and, when triggered, transmitted signals about their location to the Albatross III. The WHOI research vessel Bear shared duties monitoring the drifting buoys with the Albatross III.