A buoy from Manatee County has made a very long journey, all the way to a woman in Cornwall, England.
"I read the word Manatee," said Jessica Collins. "And I thought well, Manatee is definitely from Florida."
Collins is a resident of Cornwall, she found the buoy while walking along the British beach of Poldhu, which is about 4,258 miles away from Manatee County.
So she contacted Aedan Stockdale from Manatee County Parks and Natural Resources who confirmed the buoy is from southwest Florida.
"I was incredibly surprised, knowing the journey that that must have taken to get from the west coast of Florida, all the way to the tip of the Keys then all the way over to England," Stockdale said.
The buoy washed up covered in barnicles thousands of miles away. (Photo courtesy Jessica Collins)
Before this find, the farthest place a Manatee buoy had been located was in Texas, Stockdale said.
Marine Resources Manager Alan Lai Hipp says the kind of buoy is distinctive.
"That particular buoy was at one time used to mark the center point of an artificial reef," Hipp said.
It was moored about seven miles off of Anna Maria Island. However, Manatee County has not used these buoys for 10 years.
Collins hopes to keep the wayward buoy.
"We might be able to put it up by the entrance to the beach or something," Collins said. "But it's covered in barnacles that might start to smell if we don’t do something with it soon."