A U.S. Coast Guard cutter returned Thursday to San Diego with nearly 14 tons of cocaine.
Worth upwards of $424 million, it took a team of men to unload the haul from the ship. A large chunk of the stash came from an 11,000-pound seizure off a single freighter in the Pacific, authorities said.
It was the largest single maritime drug seizure since 2009, Michel said, calling it “an important milestone in our nation’s fight against dangerous transnational organized crime.
Coast Guard personnel stand aboard the USS Boutwell while officials unload bails of cocaine caught at sea while on deployment on April 16, 2015 at Naval Base San Diego in San Diego, California. Officials from the United States and Canada seized over 28,000 pounds of cocaine while on patrol in the Eastern Pacific which resulted in a record seizure.
Smugglers tried to toss the drugs overboard as the Coast Guard, U.S. Navy and Royal Canadian Navy closed in on the ship, Vice Adm. Charles Michel, deputy commandant for operations, said during a Thursday press conference.
The rest of the drugs were seized during 19 separate incidents across 79 days as the joint task force worked to target drug smugglers off the West Coast.
Hundreds of packages were stacked on dozens of pale tts at Naval Base San Diego as Michel spoke.
Video of the stash shows a staggering amount of drugs spread out on the dock.
This haul represents half of the more than 56,000 pounds of cocaine worth over $848 million that have been seized in this year, more than double the amount seized last year, Michel boasted.
A further 101 suspected smugglers have also been arrested since the beginning of the year, 14 of them on one boat, he added.