A fisherman man said on Wednesday he was looking for theauthor of a message in a bottle found off the southern Australian coast 50years after it was written. Paul Elliot told Australian Broadcasting Corp. thathe and his son Jyah found the bottle on the west coast of Eyre Peninsula inSouth Australia state while fishing.

Elliot said he was looking for the author Paul Gibson, whodescribed himself in the note as a 13-year-old English boy traveling in acruise ship along the southern Australian coast from Fremantle in the west toMelbourne in the east.Government oceanographer David Griffin said the bottlecould not have remained afloat for 50 years off the south coast because “theocean never stays still.”

Griffin suspected that the bottle had been buried on a beachfor years then refloated by a storm.“If it had been dropped in anywhere in theocean somewhere south of Australia, then there’s no way it’s going to stayactually at sea moving around for more than a year or two,” Griffin said.