Giant plastic bottle turns up empty in Venezuela

(CNS): The company behind a major publicity stunt to promote a Norwegian soft drink said that a giant message in a bottle pushed of the coast of Tenerife in March has finally turned up in Venezuela after being lost in the Atlantic for several weeks. But the message, as well as its radar equipment, solar equipment and cameras have all been raided by pirates, the firm believes. The 26-foot long, 2.5 tons replica soda bottle outfitted with solar panels, a camera, and tracking technology is believed to have been stripped of its expensive equipment somewhere east of Barbados.(Photos by Arjuna Maciel Camargo)

“We had almost given up hope when our social media-guy checked the hashtag #solobottle on instagram yesterday and found that a local Venezuelan photographer, Arjuna Maciel Camargo (@arjunamac), had posted photos of the local coast guard towing a yellow giant bottle,” said a spokesperson for Solo, the drink company behind the marine PR stunt.

The Venezuelan Coast Guard had found the bottle drifting in the Los Roques archipelago 100 miles north of the Venezuelan mainland on Tuesday. But there was a big hole in the bottle and the equipment as well as the message (a case of the fruit drink) were gone.

Around 100,000 Norwegians took part in a competition to guess where the plastic bottle would end up and the drinks firm is now working on establishing exactly where the bottle was found in order to announce the winner.

The firm’s boss, Joakim Sande, and his team will also be flying to Venezuela to throw a party for the Coast Guard and the 1,500 local inhabitants in Los Roques, where the bottle was recovered and taken from the ocean.