We examined data on 1184 drift bottles launched by students between 2000 and 2007 from vessels of opportunity at locations scattered along the Canadian Maritimes and Greenland (Figure 1), supplemented with data from four bottles from historical records (Becher, 1843, 1852). The results confirm and extend observations of the geographic pattern of recoveries made in 1979–1980 using 9000 drifting cards released along the Labrador Shelf (Diemand et al., 1982), and the track of surface currents in the North Atlantic determined during 1990–2002 using satellite-tracked drifters with drogues (Brambilla and Talley, 2006).

Ebbesmeyer, C.C., I.M. Belkin, H.E. Drost, S. Zimmermann, and E.C. Carmack. 2011. Wall across the Atlantic: Drift bottles released by students confirm that the Gulf Stream prevents subarctic surface drifters from escaping south. Oceanography 24(1):172–174, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2011.15.

Becher, A.B. 1843, 1852. The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle for February 1843, and November and December 1852. Simkin, Marshall, and Co., Stationers’ Hall Court.

Belkin, I.M. 2004. Propagation of the “Great Salinity Anomaly” of the 1990s around the northern North Atlantic. Geophysical Research Letters 31, L08306. [CrossRef]

Belkin, I.M., S. Levitus, J.I. Antonov, and S.-A. Malmberg, 1998. “Great Salinity Anomalies” in the North Atlantic. Progress in Oceanography 41(1):1–68. [CrossRef]

Bower, A.S., H.T. Rossby, and J.L. Lillibridge. 1985. The Gulf Stream: Barrier or blender? Journal of Physical Oceanography 15(1):24–32. [CrossRef]

Brambilla, E., and L.D. Talley. 2006. Surface drifter exchange between the North Atlantic subtropical and subpolar gyres. Journal of Geophysical Research 111, C07026. [CrossRef]

Diemand, D., E.M. Reimer, and J.V. Barrie. 1982. Ocean Drifter Studies of Surface Currents Along the Coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador and in the Beaufort Sea. Centre for Cold Ocean Resources Engineering (C-CORE), Memorial University of Newfoundland and St. John’s Newfoundland, Canada. Data Report, C-CORE Report 82-3.

Gautier, D.L., K.J. Bird, R.R. Charpentier, A. Grantz, D.W. Houseknecht, T.R. Klett, T.E. Janet, K. Pitman, C.J. Schenk, J.H. Schuenemeyer, and others. 2009. Assessment of undiscovered oil and gas in the Arctic. Science 324(5931):1,175–1,179.

Smith, E.H., F.M. Soule, and H. Mosby. 1937. Marion and General Green expeditions to the Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea under the direction of the US Coast Guard, 1928–1932–1933–1934–1935. US Coast Guard Bulletin 19, 259 pp.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.