Message In A Bottle Found: Who Are The Men In This Photo?

messageinabottlehunter.com – Manon van der Molen is the kind of person who picks up trash off the beach. Plenty of people get upset about plastic trash at sea, mucking up our beaches. But Manon? She actually does something about it.

“I hate all the trash in the ocean,” Manon told me. A kindred spirit! She has even volunteered with the Archelon Marine Turtle Protection Association.

“My kids are amazed by all the plastic in the ocean and do not understand why people do that. See–even kids understand!” Indeed. I think kids often understand these things better than adults. It’s obvious, even to children, that too many of us are not taking care of the ocean. But we could.

So, when Manon was walking the beach with her family–her husband and three kids–on May 5th, 2017, at De Haan, Belgium, she was picking up plastic trash. That’s a great way to help! And sometimes, among the trash, we stumble upon a little “treasure”–a reward for cleaning the beach, in the form of an unexpected human connection. A reminder, perhaps, that while most of what’s floating around in the ocean is simply trash that shouldn’t be there, still…maybe, just maybe, one in a billion or so pieces of flotsam can create an amazing and beautiful connection between strangers.

“That’s when I found the tube,” she told me. The “tube” she found was a little glass vial, corked and sealed, with a message inside. It stood out from all the trash on the beach, and the whole family felt a jolt of excitement at the discovery–they immediately hoped it would lead to a connection!