4 tons of pot found floating off US coast
2012-05-22 10:02
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Los Angeles - US authorities have recovered more than four tons of marijuana found bobbing in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast, in one of the largest known seizures of its kind on a maritime smuggling route increasingly used by Mexican drug traffickers.
The US Coast Guard received a call on Sunday from a boater about suspicious bales spotted floating about 19km off the coast of Orange County, south of Los Angeles, the US Border Patrol said.
The US Coast Guard, Orange County Sheriff's Department and Border Patrol responded and recovered 180 bales of marijuana weighing 3 660kg.
"This is unusual, you don't usually find a large quantity of marijuana like that," said Jerry Conlin, a spokesperson for the San Diego sector of the US Border Patrol.
"There was a search launched immediately after finding such a large quantity to make sure that there wasn't an overturned or a sunken vessel, but none were found."
The California coastal strip has become a common corridor for Mexican smugglers who, trying to beat beefed up security on the land borders, haul marijuana and even illegal immigrants north by sea from Mexico in fishing boats.
While tossing drug loads is common off the Caribbean coast of Central America, where traffickers in fast boats frequently hurl cocaine loads into the sea when challenged by the US Coast Guard, finding such a large load is a rare event in California waters.
"It's not the first time that we have seen marijuana in the ocean. But typically it might be either just to lighten up a load because they are trying to abscond ... or [they leave it] for someone else to pick it up. But to find such a large quantity like this is very rare," Conlin said.
Along the coast of Central America, fishermen-turned-beach-combers occasionally get rich from finding tossed cocaine loads, which they call "white lobster".
But Conlin said there had been no reports of pot washing up on California beaches. "It's believed that they recovered all the bundles that were out there," he said.
