US$40M Worth of Cocaine Seized off the Galapagos Islands

Ecuador’s anti-narcotics police and coast guard seized 1.9 tons of cocaine off the coast of the Galapagos Islands as traffickers ply new routes to smuggle their illicit cargo, officials said on Sunday.

The first batch of drugs was confiscated from a high speed boat last Thursday, while a second boat was captured on Friday.

The operation, part of a joint effort by police and the Ecuadoran navy, intercepted the equivalent of more than seven million individual doses of the contraband drug, the interior ministry announced.

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The shipment had an estimated street value of some US$40 million.

Smugglers tried to throw drugs overboard in an attempt to make the boat go faster during their scramble to escape, the Interior Ministry said.

Traffickers, many based in Colombia, are exploiting a vast and expanding swath of ocean, from one end of the Americas to the other, for the illicit drug trade, officials said.

The cocaine seized last week appeared to have traveled from coastal areas near the border of Colombia and Ecuador and were following a drug-smuggling route around San Cristobal Island.

The Galapagos archipelago, located 620 miles west of the Ecuadorean coast, has a fragile ecosystem that harbors the largest number of different animal species on the planet.

It has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.