The French navy has seized 2.4 tons of cocaine from a Venezuelan fishing boat in the Atlantic Ocean, authorities said Monday.
Acting on a tip from customs, a helicopter from the surveillance frigate Ventose landed a team on the fishing boat about 1,500 kilometers northeast of the Caribbean island of Martinique, the French Caribbean Armed Forces department said.
The boat, crew and cocaine have been turned over to Venezuelan authorities, the department said in a Facebook post.
The incident marked another major seizure of cocaine in the same waters this month. On May 2 and 9, authorities said the Ventôse and the patrol vessel La Résolue seized 2,466 kilos of cocaine in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of the Antilles. The French Navy posted images of the seizure.
French Navy
The military department said it has now seized more than 12 tons of narcotics this year. The Caribbean is becoming increasingly important in the cocaine trade from South America to Europe and North America.
The 22.7 tons of cocaine intercepted in the region in 2022 was more than five times as much as ten years earlier.
French Navy
International drug traffickers routinely use various types of boats to transport narcotics. Earlier this month, Italian police announced the seizure of one remote controlled submarine probably intended to transport drugs as part of an international drug trafficking network.
Much bigger semi-submersible ships, which cannot completely submerge, are popular among international drug traffickers because they can often escape detection by authorities. The so-called “narco subs” are sometimes seized in Colombian waters while en route to the United States, Central America and Europe.
Colombia produces approximately 60% of the cocaine found in the world.
