SEAN BERCAW has thought a lot about why one of the most ancient and storied forms of communication, a message in a bottle, is considered romantic. He has sent more than 250 of them out to sea.

“Anyone launching a bottle is investing his or her hopes and desires in the bottle being found,” he says. “The cool thing about it is, it’s not simply black and white, succeed or fail. Even if no one finds it now, there is always that possibility. That hope always exists that someone may find it a hundred years later.”