Police find 2 tons of cocaine worth more than $440 million floating off the coast of Italy

• Italian police stumbled upon nearly two tons of cocaine floating in the Mediterranean sea.
• More than $440 million worth of cocaine was found in 70 packages connected by a signaling device.

Italian police stumbled upon an illicit substance jackpot off the coast of Sicily over the weekend when they discovered nearly two tons of cocaine floating in the Mediterranean Sea during a routine surveillance flight.

In a Monday statement, Italy's financial police, the Guardia di Finanza, said officials seized more than $440 million worth of cocaine they found packaged in 70 waterproof bundles bobbing in the open water.

Police said the careful packaging of the drugs was likely in place to protect the cocaine from water infiltration. Authorities also found a light-up signaling device in the water that appeared to be holding the packages together via several nets.

Officials speculated that a cargo ship dumped the drugs at sea for traffickers to pick up and deliver to the mainland where the cocaine could be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. The signaling device was likely used to track the contents of the packages, according to police.

Air and maritime authorities with the Sicilian municipality of Catania provided cover for responding officers to retrieve the drugs, and officials said they are continuing to search the nearby area for any additional packages.

After bringing the drugs to land, authorities tested the contents of the packages and determined that the white powder inside was indeed cocaine, the Guardia di Finanza said.

In the Monday statement, police said it was one of the largest-ever seizures in the country.

"The identification and subsequent seizure of a similar quantity of drugs, one of the largest ever carried out in the national territory, prevented the drug from being likely to be recovered by criminal subjects for subsequent illegal marketing in the national territory, which would have yielded very high earnings, in the order of approximately over 400 million euros at retail," police said.

The discovery comes just weeks after New Zealand police intercepted half a billion dollars worth of cocaine — enough to service the entire national market for 30 years — floating in the Pacific Ocean in February.

In 2017, Spanish police seized more than two metric tons of cocaine from a ship sailing in the Atlantic Ocean and arrested seven crew members.