56-year-old message in a bottle turns out to be part of a scientific study

A Texas couple found a real message in a bottle but it wasn't a love letter, it was science.

Candy Duke and her husband, Jim, were walking along the shore at Padre Island near their home in Corpus Christi, Texas, last month when they came across the bottle washed up among some tree limbs, according to an National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) press release.

What thye had discovered turned out to be one of 7,863 bottles released between February 1962 to December 1963 by researchers at the Galveston Laboratory of the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (NOAA Fisheries).

Each bottle contained a message instructing the person who found it to break open the bottle. Inside was a postcard for the person to fill out the date and location, along with the promise of a 50-cent reward.

The researchers were studying the the role of water currents in the movement of young shrimp from spawning grounds offshore to inshore nursery grounds.

The couple streamed a Facebook live video, as they tried to extricate the note from inside the bottle without shattering it.

"I keep thinking because it has a number on it maybe we've won some grand prize to some place, maybe a cruise, I don't know," Candy said in the video.

"We don't want to break the bottle that's why we're trying so hard to get this cork out. We collect bottles from the beach and we have them going down Jim's fence in the backyard ... This is harder than I thought," she added.

The video has now received 10,000 views on Facebook but it is, as yet, unclear if the Dukes have received their 50-cent reward. However, Candy rather cryptically posted on Facebook "Received a very exciting call about the bottle that we found. Stay tuned for more info !!!"

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