Kids’ Hilarious Messages in Bottles Wash Ashore in Woods Hole

"Just to warn you, I am sending assassins."

Imagine seeing that note inside one of three messages in bottles that recently washed ashore on Cape Cod. It may seem a little cryptic, but stick with me, I promise it's not.

Patrick Clarke, the founder of ocean-centric jewelry and accessory shop, Cape Clasp, was out for a day of clamming at Juniper Point in Woods Hole last week when he came across the bottles in a spot he had never really explored before.

"I didn't find any clams, I didn't find any good sand bar[s] out there, but I was just kind walking along the, you know it's a rocky coast right there, and I found a couple buoys and [was] picking up trash too," Clarke said. "All of a sudden I kind of came across this little corner between a couple rocks and there were like three messages in a bottle that all kind of washed up in the same spot."

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Clarke, who has used the Cape Clasp TikTok account to share some of his unique beachcombing finds for the past year or so, gathered up the bottles with excitement and brought them home. But the messages he found in these bottles were probably not what he expecting.

"One guy said he was the real owner of the Applebee's franchise," Clarke said. "They were just hilarious; They were very creative, very fun messages. You could tell right away [they] were written by a bunch of creative kids."

Creative kids, indeed. Clarke came to find out that the bottles were part of a project at the Children's School of Science in Woods Hole, where kids had written their own messages, stuffed them in bottles and thrown them into Vineyard Sound to see where they would end up.

"Now that I've stumbled upon those [bottles], I've been following a lot of [the Children's School of Science's] stuff, and it seems like it's a really cool program for kids and definitely a great learning experience," Clarke said. "If you throw something out in the ocean, you don't know where it's going to end up."

And although these bottles didn't travel super far, it's still pretty incredible that they all washed ashore at the same spot.

So what is Cape Clasp? According to the founder himself, it's a company with a "mission to make waves for marine-life causes and...make all products that give back to the ocean." Cape Clasp's website features everything from neat charm bracelets that benefit different non-profits to a new line of products called Tikos, which utilizes discarded plastic waste collected from beaches and coastlines.

Since Clarke started sharing his short-form videos about a year ago, they've gained a lot of traction on TikTok and have helped the company spread its ocean-centric message. Many fellow beachcombers have not been shy to share their amazement with how Clarke always seems to come across the coolest finds, though.

"How do you happen to find all these creatures all the time?" @irishbabekw commented on a previous video when Clarke shared a mass of squid eggs he had come across. "I'm on the Cape and never find anything...ever!"

Clarke said it comes from both a lot of walking and knowing where to look. He tends to find a lot of great things along his daily walks with his dog, and recommends the Wood's Hole Passage area, where the strong current tends to wash a bunch of stuff up onto the beach, especially after a storm.

"It's a place where you definitely run into a bunch of stuff if you're a beachcomber like me," Clarke said. "People see probably the highlight reel, but there's a lot of walking and not finding stuff that goes on too."

The SouthCoast and Cape Cod have been ripe spots for discovering messages in bottles lately. Just last weekend, an Acushnet man found a message in a bottle, unrelated to the Children's School of Science, in Buzzards Bay while he was out on his jet ski.