Boaters in Florida find 56 pounds of barnacle-covered cocaine

Discovery comes after drugs washed ashore during Tropical Storm Debby

Boaters off the coast of Florida this week spotted a bundle of 56 pounds worth of cocaine with a street value $625,000, according to local police.

“We appreciate the help of Good Samaritans in our community who saw something unusual and contacted law enforcement,” Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk said in a statement on Facebook.

The drugs, discovered off Panther Key, near Everglades City, Florida, were contained in a package the size of a microwave, filled with individually wrapped kilos of the drug.

The bundle was found covered with barnacles, suggesting to police 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.”

A officer from the Collier County Sheriff’s Office holds up a package of drugs found floating in the Gulf of Mexico on August 12, 2024. (Collier County Sheriff’s Office)

However, according to the sheriffs, finding such a discovery was more common in the region in the 1970s and ‘80s compared to today.

The cocaine wasn’t the only illicit discovery recently in Florida waters.

The recent Tropical Storm Debby washed an estimated $1m of cocaine onto a Florida Keys beach near Islamorada.

In June, boaters in Florida found $1m worth of cocaine emblazoned with bald eagles floating in the Florida Keys.