Coast Guard seizes semi-submersible carrying $181M in cocaine

On June 16, a similar vessel carrying 5,460 pounds of cocaine was also intercepted by Coast Guard’s Stratton.

Video of the confrontation shows armed Coast Guard crew members opening the vessel’s top – the craft is floating at the surface – and demanding its crew to climb out.

The cocaine seized was worth more than $181 million dollars. A total of 16,000 pounds of drugs were found inside the semi-submersible vessel transported by four smugglers who were taken into custody, CNN reported.

The crew of the Cutter Stratton removed 12,000 pounds of cocaine from the drug boat during the July 18 bust. These vessels are extremely hard to detect and interdict because of their low-profile and ability to scuttle.

Coast Guard Cutter Stratton crewmembers secure cocaine bales from a self-propelled semi-submersible interdicted in worldwide waters off the coast of Central America, July 19, 2015.

Authorities say the vessel was not a submarine but a boat designed to sit just at the water line, nearly sinking, but not quite, and painted blue to blend in.

After extracting 12,000 pounds, the Coast Guard kept the remaining stash within the submersible to help stabilize the vessel and attempted to tow it to shore to study its working and help improve their technology of interception.

The traffickers’ submarine has been stopped on the Mexican coast and it represents the largest amount of drug ever confiscated by the U.S. Coast Guard in this kind of operations.

And this is how drug traffickers were trying to smuggle it across countries.

“Every seizure disrupts the networks of global organized crime and reinforces the security and stability in the Western Hemisphere”, said Vice Admiral Charles W. Ray, head of the Pacific, said in the statement.

There have been 25 known semi-submersible busts in the Eastern Pacific Ocean since November 2006.