Drift bottles have long been used as an inexpensive (and fun) way to study ocean surface currents. A very simple piece of scientific equipment, a drift bottle is an empty glass bottle with a watertight lid and a note inside it explaining how to make contact with the research project. Project participants, throw these bottles over the side of ocean-going ships, and note the 'drop' location of each bottle; when a bottle is found and reported to the project, location information is added to a database for analysis. To learn more about the science behind this research, please see The Study of Flow.

The IOS Drift Bottle Project began in 2000 as a contribution to the RCMP's St. Roch II Millennium Project, when bottles were dropped along the west coast of Canada, around Alaska, and through the Canadian Arctic. Over the past few years, the project has dropped additional bottles in the Arctic, as well as south along the west coast of North America from Victoria to the Panama Canal, and north from the Panama Canal to the Bahamas.

"It is incredible to think that a single bottle managed to accomplish in one try [traversing the Northwest Passage] what so many explorers were unable to do."