Bahama Boy’s Message in Bottle Read 4,000 Miles Later

A.J. Pike

Bahamas to Portugal - A boy who threw a message in a bottle into the ocean off his home in the Bahamas was shocked to find it was recovered on a beach in Portugal one year later. 

Amy Bisterzo and her 10-year old son, Lorenzo, live in the Bahama’s archipelago town of Old Fort Bay. On February 10, 2025, they decided to conduct a fun type experiment and test the age-old story of throwing a message in a bottle into the sea.

“Of course when we first threw it we were so excited to imagine what might become of the bottle and where it would go,” Ms. Bisterzo said. “But honestly as time went by we completely forgot about it.” She admitted that it was sort of an exciting activity to do with a child, “but in my adult mind I knew it was highly unlikely anyone would find it.”

Her son wrote down both his and his mother’s WhatsApp numbers, along with the name of their town and the date, before they took off in a jet ski and hurled it into the blue waters.

Fast forward one year and 4,000 miles later: A 49-year old school teacher, Maria Enes, was walking her dog on Vila Cha Beach near the city of Porto in Portugal on February 12, 2026, when she spotted the bottle amongst a pile of sticks. 

“It was a childhood fantasy,” said Ms. Enes of finding a bottle on a beach. “As I could see it read 2025 and the bottle looked so new, I thought it was from the area where I live,” she went on.  “So I took it home and twisted off the top and removed the paper with tweezers. I was completely astonished to read that it came from the Bahamas and that exactly one year had passed. I thought it was awesome and I immediately called the phone number in the note.”

Back in Old Fort Bay, Ms. Bisterzo was getting ready to go to bed when a random number popped up on her WhatsApp line coming from Portugal.

“This strange number popped up with someone saying ‘I got your bottle,” Lorenzo’s mother recalled.

When she realized it was her son’s handwriting on the paper in the photo that followed, she immediately unblocked the number. 

“I shouted upstairs to Lorenzo ‘someone found our bottle.’ It was so long ago he didn’t know what I was talking about at first until I showed him the photo. Then I started to communicate with Maria, and she sent voice notes and videos. Very quickly I realized this woman was so kind and lovely.”

Lorenzo’s mother said she is hoping they can meet one day on the Vila Cha beach so they can all throw a bottle into the ocean together.

“I never thought it would be found, let alone almost to the year exactly, let alone go so far and also be found by the perfect person.”  

Note: Other Amazing Message in a Bottle Stories that symbolize lost time, resilience and the need for humans to connect with each other across time and place - 

• Fact: In 2025, a scuba instructor found a green bottle in a Michigan river with a note from George Morrow dated 1926, which was successfully returned to Mr. Morrow’s daughter nearly a century later.

• Fact: Brad and Anita Squires, a Canadian couple, dropped a note in the Atlantic in 2012, it was found in 2025 on an Irish Beach, having survived 13 years at sea.

• Fact or Fiction: One of the oldest message in a bottle stories, regarded by some as a myth, is that of a Japanese seaman, Chunosuke Matsuyama, who sent a message in a bottle after being shipwrecked with 43 other sailors on a coral reef in the South Pacific after a storm destroyed their ship in 1784. Facing death from starvation and dehydration, Matsuyama allegedly carved a detailed account of their plight on a coconut tree bark and placed it in a sealed bottle and tossed it into the sea.. The crew eventually perished. The bottle was reportedly found washed up ashore in 1935 in the Japanese village of Hiraturemura, where Matsuyama was born, The message sailed for 150 years after it was cast into the sea before it was discovered. Believe It or Not?