LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Leila Fadel. Crispin Benton was on an evening stroll on a beach in southwestern England when he spotted something in the sand. It was a real-life message in a bottle that washed up on shore from thousands of miles away. The handwritten letter, dated June 2001, was written by a 6-year-old named Anna on a family vacation in the Bahamas. The message, written in crayon, read please don't pollute. Thank you. If Benton doesn't keep the bottle, he better take Anna's advice and recycle it. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.