A message in a bottle gave researchers a shocking wake up call about receding Arctic glaciers in the "Canadian soil closest to the North Pole."
Fifty-four years ago American geologist Paul Walker buried a bottled message indicating a nearby glacier 1.2 meters (close to four feet) away, the Chronicle Herald reported.
The note asked that whoever found it remeasured the distance between the message and the glacier and send along the findings.
The message was dated from 1959; unfortunately Walker will never get to hear the results asked for in his message.
"He had a medical problem on Ward Hunt later that year and had to be flown out. This is one of his last communications," Warwick Vincent, Laval University biologist who discovered the note along with his colleagues, told the Chronicle Herald.
The researchers were surprises Walker thought to leave the note in the first place.
"Because in the '50s, it was unthinkable that this would melt," Vincent said.
The team found the glacier that was once only 1.2 meters away from where the message was found was now a staggering 101.5 meters (about 333 feet) away.
Vincent said he was "not surprised" by the results, but found it fascinating to have a "point of comparison."
"With our camera, we captured the complete loss of [the Ward Hunt] ice shelf. Suddenly our camera caught this open water, we think for the first time in thousands of years," Vincent told the Chronicle Herald. "The changes are extraordinary, particularly the last 10 years, and especially the last two years."
The researcher plans to send a copy of the report to Ohio State University, where Walker once worked.
"I was just so pleased because it brought Paul back, in a way, and the work he had done," a historian who knew Walker said, USA Today reported. "He had a brilliant career as a glaciologist and all of a sudden, to be cut short that way."
