The crew of the US Coast Guard Cutter Sherman unloaded roughly 11 tons of cocaine in San Diego on August 18. The haul was the result of seizures performed by USCG Cutters Alert, Reliance, Sherman, Tampa, and Vigorous in the eastern Pacific from mid-June through July.
The Coast Guard stopped a semi-submersible craft carrying nearly 6.5 tons of cocaine earlier this year. About 90% of the cocaine used in the US is smuggled through the Central America/Mexico corridor, and 2.2 pounds of the drug can fetch up $150,000 once it is broken down and resold on US streets.
Watch the unloading video below:
The drug shipments were intercepted in
The eastern Pacific Ocean has become an important thoroughfare for illegal narcotics produced in South America and headed for the US and points elsewhere.
Latin American criminal organizations often coordinate to move shipments north from the Pacific Coasts of Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia (which produces the most coca in the world), to destinations in Central America, particularly Guatemala, and parts of Mexico's west coast.
Mexico's Pacific ports and other coastal areas have also become areas of competition for that country's drug cartels, driving violence up.
In March this year, Admiral Kurt Tidd, head of US forces operating in Central and South America, told lawmakers that US forces were ill-prepared to meet the goal of interdicting 40% of the illegal traffic moving from the region toward the US.
"I do not have the ships, I do not have the aircraft, to be able to execute the detection-monitoring mission to the level that has been established for us to achieve," Tidd said at the time.