The United States Coast Guard has intercepted its 30th drug semi-submersible in Caribbean waters in less than six years, the agency said on Wednesday.
The Coast Guard said that two of its cutters, the Decisive and Pea Island, chased down a drug submarine on March 30 in the Western Caribbean with aid from the Honduran Navy.
It said the bow of the sub was painted with shark’s teeth as it disappeared beneath the surface.
The Coast Guard said the suspected smugglers on board scuttled the cramped craft before they were taken into custody, sending their suspicious load into “thousands of feet of water” about 150 nautical miles (277.8 kilometres) north of Honduras.
The Coast Guard estimated that the submarine was carrying several tons of drugs.
It said federal authorities kept the interdiction secret until the four smuggling suspects captured at the time were brought ashore to face charges at the US District Court in Miami. The Coast Guard did not release their identities or nationalities.
Until this latest episode, the Coast Guard said it had stopped or sunk a total of 29 of the low-tech stealth vessels — 25 in the eastern Pacific and four in the Caribbean.
In the first four Caribbean cases, the Coast Guard said the crews scuttled their craft in shallow enough water that US law enforcement divers recovered packages of cocaine estimated to value 699 million US dollars.
In one case, the Coast Guard said it turned to an elite FBI underwater evidence recovery team from Quantico, Virginia to bring up the sealed bricks of cocaine to make sure that no criminals could retrieve the haul.
Since then, US officials calculate that they have interdicted about 200 tonnes of cocaine valued at 5.3 billion dollars.
Antigua Observer
