Police found an abandoned boat that washed up on a remote atoll in the Marshall Islands carrying the most considerable amount of cocaine that has ever been found in the nation.
According to Agence-France Presse, the 18-foot fiberglass vessel was found last week with almost kilos of drugs onboard. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates a street value of $55 million for the haul.
Attorney general Richard Hickson believes the vessel most likely drifted across the Pacific from Central or South America and “could have been drifting for a year or two.”
Officials say the cocaine was packaged in one-kilogram packages and marked with the letters “KW.” All of the bundles were incinerated on Tuesday. Only two kilos remain, and they will be handed over to the United States Drug Enforcement Agency for investigation.
It is common for debris from the Americas to wash up on the Marshall Islands, which is not the first time drugs have washed ashore. Several other stashes have been found along the Marshall’s shoreline over the past two decades.
Police have speculated that drug-runners may lose their hauls in inclement weather or choose to abandon them if they are in danger of getting caught.
A study by the University of Hawaii researchers found that many drift patterns from Mexico’s coast eventually led to the island nation.
