Iceland's president takes home 'message in bottle'

Iceland's president, Guðni Jóhannesso, receives the GPS tracker-fitted "message in a bottle"

The president of Iceland has personally collected and taken back to his country a "message in a bottle" set adrift to show the movement of marine litter.

The message, a GPS tracker-fitted device, was one of two dropped from a helicopter in the sea off southern Iceland a year ago.

One was found on Tiree in January and the second was found in the Faroese island of Sandoy earlier this month.

President Guðni Jóhannesson was on an official trip to the Faroe Islands.

One of the two devices washed up on Tiree in the Inner Hebrides

The devices were released simultaneously as part of an experiment highlighting marine pollution.

Both floated west, passing the coast of Greenland and then towards Canada before drifting east.

For several weeks it had looked as if the second device would end up back on the shores of Iceland.

It then headed in the general direction of Shetland before drifting back to the Faroes.

The two devices were part of a science experiment set up to test where marine litter ends up.

Rhoda Meek, who found the Tiree device, posted it back to the Icelandic scientists involved in the test.