The U.S. Coast Guard recorded on video a frantic boat crew desperately dumping what officials said were huge bags of cocaine into the sea during a high-speed chase in the eastern Pacific earlier this month.
Despite loads going overboard, the Coast Guard managed to confiscate thousands of pounds of the drug in the July 18 nail-biter chase, officials announced.
Coast Guard crew members “apprehended the suspected smugglers and seized approximately 2,300 pounds of cocaine from the vessel,” the service said in a statement Friday.
That operation and a series of others in international waters off Mexico and Central and South America beginning in late June netted an astounding total of 26,000 pounds of cocaine valued at $350 million, according to officials. The cocaine was confiscated from six suspected drug-smuggling vessels — and plucked from the sea. The 13-ton haul was transported to San Diego and unloaded from the Coast Guard cutter Steadfast on Friday.
“This was 26,000 pounds of cocaine that will not make it to the main streets of the U.S.A.,” said Coast Guard district commander Rear Adm. Peter Gautier. “We know that with a supply chain of illegal narcotics, at every single step there’s violence, instability and despair.”
Earlier this month Coast Guard crew members leaped on a submarine allegedly packed with cocaine in another successful James-Bond-like operation.
Check out the latest adventure of derring-do in the video up top.
