Marshall Islands police have found the Pacific nation's largest-ever haul of cocaine worth some $80million in an abandoned boat that washed up on a remote atoll after drifting on the high seas, potentially for years.
Attorney General Richard Hickson said the 18ft fiberglass vessel was found at Ailuk atoll last week with 1,430 pounds of cocaine hidden in a compartment beneath the deck.
Hickson said the vessel most likely drifted across the Pacific from Central or South America.
An undated handout photo received on December 16, 2020 from the Marshall Islands Police Department shows an 18-foot fiberglass boat washed up on Ailuk Atoll, a remote atoll with about 400 people, in the Marshall Islands last week
Attorney General Richard Hickson said the 18ft fiberglass vessel was found at Ailuk atoll last week with 1,430 pounds of cocaine hidden in a compartment beneath the deck
The boat was carrying 649 sealed bricks of cocaine each weighing 1 kilo. The total street value of the cocaine found on the boat is estimated at $80million
'It could have been drifting for a year or two,' he said.
Police said the drugs, which were in one-kilogram packages marked with the letters 'KW', were incinerated on Tuesday, aside from two packs that will be given to the US Drug Enforcement Agency for analysis.
Debris from the Americas often washes up in the Marshalls after months or years at sea, driven by Pacific Ocean currents.
There have been numerous other stashes of drugs found along the Marshall Islands' shoreline over the past two decades, including another one in Ailuk, but the latest haul was by far the largest.
Marshal Islands police are seen above loading boxes filled with the cocaine into a police pickup truck on Tuesday
Marshall Islands Police Captain Eric Jorban (left) empties one-kilo packages of cocaine into an incinerator in Majuro in the Marshall Islands
Law enforcement officials have various theories about the origins of such drugs, including that they were abandoned when smugglers were in danger of being caught, or lost in storms.
A resident of Ailuk, whose total population numbers some 400 people, discovered the boat last week, according to Radio New Zealand.
Islanders then tried to lift the boat out of the water and onto shore, but it was too heavy. They investigated further and found that the vessel was being weighed down by a total of 649 sealed bricks of cocaine each weighing 1 kilo.
In January 2014, Salvadoran fisherman Jose Alvarenga washed up in the Marshalls, more than 13 months after he set off from Mexico's west coast with a companion, who died during the voyage.
After his discovery, University of Hawaii researchers conducted 16 computer simulations of drift patterns from the Mexico coast and found nearly all eventually arrived in the Marshall Islands.
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