Coast Guard personnel were joined by other federal agencies Christmas Eve to remove more than 85 pounds of cocaine from a Maltese tanker ship off the Galveston coast.
A drop in the proverbial bucket. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine are smuggled into Houston aboard these tankers each year.
The crew of the 900-foot oil tanker Godavari Spirit notified the Coast Guard by radio that they had located a suspicious package hidden aboard their ship and suspected it to contain narcotics.
A joint boarding team consisting of the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration, were taken 70 miles offshore aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Manowar to board the tanker and to confiscate the cocaine.
Upon completing a thorough search, the team located and seized a total of 31 packages of cocaine, valued at over $1,000,000. No arrests have been made at this time.
