A MESSAGE in a bottle has been washed up on a Purbeck beach after spending more than 500 days at sea and travelling over 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

The wine bottle, still perfectly sealed, was discovered at Durdle Door early on Saturday morning.

The note inside revealed it had travelled on ocean currents from Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA, where it was thrown into the water by a fisherman back in August 2005.

Its finder, the Daily Echo's own John Nesbitt, spotted it while out taking photographs.

He said: "It was in the foreground of a photo I was taking so I went to kick it out of the way and noticed it had something inside it. I saw the word 'Nantucket' and the date 2005, and that's when it became interesting."

"Its intriguing really," he added. "I'll definitely reply."

The man behind the bottle is Pennel Ames, a fisherman and carpenter from the island of Nantucket.

The Daily Echo tracked him down and discovered he has cast some 500 bottles into the water since beginning his unusual hobby in 2000. And his efforts have been rewarded with almost 40 responses from America and around the world, including the Hebrides off the Scottish coast, County Mayo in Ireland, Southern Portugal, the Canary Islands, Bermuda, Cuba and Grenada.

Mr Ames said he started releasing his bottles after hearing about a local school project which involved throwing message bottles off the Nantucket ferry.

The 51-year-old added: "I thought 'that sounds like fun' so I started doing it. It took a long time to get a reply. The first year I didn't get anything, then a couple of years later they started to trickle in."

Some of his bottles are discovered nearby weeks after their release, others spend up to three years at sea before being washed ashore.

Mr Ames and his two children keep all the replies in a scrapbook and have even struck up friendships with some of their senders.

He said: "I try to get out as many as I can. Some years it's 50. The most I ever did in a year was 170, but the most replies I ever got was three."

He added: "I'll keep doing it if I can.

"It's an easy hobby to keep."