A handwritten letter that a young girl in Japan sent into the sky in a balloon some 15 years ago has been found on a fish hauled from 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) below the Pacific.

A fisherman found the still legible piece of paper sitting on a sticky flatfish in his catch on Thursday, along with a torn-off string and the fragment of a red balloon.

He opened the folded paper, discovering it was a handwritten letter from a six-year-old girl - Natsumi Shirahige - at an elementary school in Kawasaki, 150 kilometres (93 miles) away from where the fish was caught off Choshi port. Read more from Yahoo News)