The discovery of a mud-caked glass bottle on the beach by a nine-year-old girl turned out to in fact be a 37-year-old message in a bottle. 

From Japan and beause it had been in the water for almost four decades - it made its way to where the child was enjoying a a family day out in a Hawaiian Paradise Park.

Abbie Graham, of Keaau, and her parents Angie and John Graham said they were initially sceptical that the object was anything other than litter.

"I thought it was trash, and she thought it was treasure," John Graham told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

The family took the bottle with them, and they eventually discovered Abbie's suspicions that they had discovered a message in a bottle were correct.

"A couple days later we opened it up, and it was from Japan," Abbie recalled.

The note inside the bottle was authored by the Chiba Prefectural Choshi High School Natural Science Club in Japan. The message was printed in English, Spanish and Japanese.

"This bottle was thrown into the sea off the coast of Choshi, Japan, in July 1984," the note read.

In the letter the finder was asked to get into contact with the club with information including the coordinates where the bottle was discovered. It said the bottle was part of an "ocean current investigation".

The family said they have not yet been able to get into contact with the authors of the message.

"We looked online, but the website is all in Japanese, so we couldn't read anything," John Graham said. "So we figured we'd just maybe laminate it and send it back to the school at the address they gave us. We figure the people who sent it have got to be 50/55 years-old by now."