Message in a bottle from RI travels across the Atlantic Ocean

THURSDAY UPDATE: The two teens are now in-touch!

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — Two teens, nearly 3,000 miles away, are now in-touch… all because of a message in a bottle released into the ocean in Rhode Island in 2018.

Spearfishing in the Azores last week, Christian Santos expected to catch a few fish… definitely not a message in a bottle from Rhode Island.

“It’s just amazing that I found it, that I had the luck to find this,” Santos tells ABC6 on Wednesday.

Santos says he was on a family vacation on São Jorge, an island in the central group of the Azores archipelago, when something caught his eye in the water.

“I was going to cross the water and I found this bottle, and I went to grab it thinking it was trash and it had paper in it,” Santos says.

The 17-year-old says he soon realized it was not trash– instead, he had found a real-life message in a bottle.

The note inside of a Powerade bottle was written in orange marker on a notecard that reads, “It is Thanksgiving. I am 13 and visiting family in Rhode Island. I am from Vermont.”

Ironically so- Santos was a Rhode Island native before moving to Portugal with his family.

Santos says he has emailed the contact information and is waiting for a response. His goal is to one day meet the other teen who wrote this message and talk about this story.