Charles Temple, an English teacher at Ocracoke School in Hyde County explained that for the past five years the finalist students at the school take a boat trip and throw messages in bottles into the Gulf Stream.

The messages consist of handwritten notes about graduation programs.

Temple said he never received news of any of the bottles having been found, until Elena Bretan tagged the school in a Facebook post, where she explained that she had found a message inside a bottle on a beach in Setúbal - almost 6,000 kilometres away.

In the note was a photograph with the eight students from the graduating class and a note saying that it had been shot on July 26, 2020.

"How cool is this?" wrote the school when sharing Elena's post on their social media page.

The teacher clarified that the bottle belonged to Alan Doshier, who probably still doesn't know it has been found, as he currently works on a fishing boat in the Bahamas.