A competition to forecast the locations of 90 floats drifting in the Atlantic could lead to better methods for tracking oil slicks and locating shipwreck survivors.

An international competition organized by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to predict the drift of a "message in a bottle" on the open sea has been won by a satellite engineer without prior experience in oceanography. The challenge, involving drifting ocean buoys, saw 31 teams competing for the top prize of $25,000 in the Forecasting Floats in Turbulence Challenge.