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MAJURO, Marshall Islands: Marshall Islands police found the largest cocaine booty ever recorded in the Pacific nation in an abandoned boat that reached a remote atoll after being adrift on the high seas, potentially for years.
Attorney General Richard Hickson said the 5.5m fiberglass boat was found on Ailuk Atoll last week with 649kg of cocaine hidden in a compartment below deck.
Hickson said the ship most likely crossed the Pacific from Central or South America. “It could have been adrift for a year or two,” he said.
Police said the drugs, which were in 1-kg packages marked “KW,” were incinerated on Tuesday, in addition to two packages that will be turned over to the US Drug Enforcement Administration for analysis.
Marshall Islands Police Capt. Eric Jorban (left) empties 1kg packages of cocaine into an incinerator in Majuro, Marshall Islands. (Photo: AFP / Giff Johnson)
Debris from the Americas is often deposited on the Marshalls after months or years at sea, driven by currents from the Pacific Ocean.
Many other drug caches have been found along the coast of the Marshall Islands over the past two decades, including another in Ailuk, but the last loot was by far the largest.
Law enforcement officials have various theories about the origin of such drugs, including the fact that they were abandoned when smugglers were in danger of being caught or lost in storms.
In January 2014, Salvadoran fisherman José Alvarenga arrived at the Marshalls, more than 13 months after he left the west coast of Mexico with a partner, who died during the trip.
After their discovery, researchers at the University of Hawaii ran 16 computer simulations of drift patterns off the coast of Mexico and found that almost all of them eventually made it to the Marshall Islands.
