Boaters off the coast of Florida discovered a 56-pound bundle of cocaine worth $625,000, according to local authorities.
“We appreciate the help of Good Samaritans in our community who saw something unusual and contacted law enforcement,” Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk stated in a Facebook statement.
The drugs recovered off Panther Key near Everglades City, Florida, were in a microwave-sized box containing individually wrapped kilos of the substance.
Police discovered the bundle encrusted with barnacles, indicating that it had been in the water for a long time.
“Detectives said the cocaine most likely washed in with the tides from the east coast due to recent storms,” according to the sheriff’s office. “Large packages of drugs ranging from marijuana to hashish to cocaine have been discovered floating in the waters off Miami and the Florida Keys.”
However, the sheriffs report that such discoveries were more common in the region in the 1970s and 1980s than they are today.
The cocaine was not the only illegal substance discovered recently in Florida waters.
The recent Tropical Storm Debby swept an estimated $1 million worth of cocaine onto a Florida Keys beach near Islamorada.
In June, Florida sailors discovered $1 million worth of cocaine painted with bald eagles drifting in the Florida Keys.