The members of the U.S. Coast Guard are getting some much-deserved praise after video of one of their more interesting drug busts went viral.
On June 18, the Coast Guard Cutter Munro caught sight of a semi-submersible vessel racing through the water in the East Pacific and moved to intercept it.
Semi-submersible vessels are a challenge for the Coast Guard to spot.
They ride low in the water, just at the surface, and they’re often camouflaged.
“They blend in,” Lt. Commander Stephen Brickey told CNN . “Most of the vessel is underwater, so it’s hard to pick out. They’re painted blue. They match the water.”
Lt. Commander Brickey added that these vessels don’t show up very often.
He said that they’re costly for cartels to build, and they have to be built deep in the jungle to avoid being spotted by the authorities.
Moreover, the Coast Guard patrols an area the size of the U.S. with two ships, so only about 11% of all the vessels that pass through the area can be stopped.
The Coast Guard also faces some issues with their own means of taking down cartels in the water.
As Brickey explained, 70 percent of Coast Guard’s fleet is over 50 years old. These crafts are much slower than their competition and take a lot of maintenance before they can even be deployed. With such dated vessels, it can be difficult to keep up with the bigger, faster cartel-constructed means of travel.
“They’re not really effective enough to meet this new threat,” Brickey said.
In this case, the vessel was spotted by an aircraft, and then Munro had to go find it.
So, once the Munro had picked out this semi-submersible, it wasn’t about to let it get away. However, the crew had to act quickly.
When they know they’ve been caught, the smugglers aboard these vessels will often ditch and sink the ship, destroying the evidence. They know that the Coast Guard will pluck them out of the water.
And so, the Munro deployed two smaller boats with a few agents on board each to get close quietly.
Once they had closed the gap, it was game on.
In the video, an agent can be heard shouting in Spanish and pointing at the vessel, ordering it to stop.
Of course, the semi-submersible did not heed the shouts and kept right on going.
So agents had to board the vessel. How do Coast Guard agents board a boat that can skim along just below the surface? With great difficulty.
Two men jumped directly onto the vessel.
The agent in the lead made his way to the hatch and started hammering on it. Within seconds, the hatch opened and a pair of hands appeared.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this heart-stopping video is the fact that both men involved were weighted down with heavy equipment.
The guardsmen, who leaped directly on top of the vessel, were decked out in camouflage fatigue and equipment, without any sign of life vests on their persons. Should this daring mission have gone sideways in any way, leading to either man taking a dip in the Pacific, they could have been in some serious trouble.
Not only did the Coast Guard take the smugglers into custody, but they nabbed the evidence, too.
Namely, an estimated 17,000 pounds of cocaine.
With all of its 14 busts combined while out on patrol, when the Munro got back to port, it offloaded more than 39,000 pounds of cocaine and 933 pounds of marijuana, at an estimated value of $569 million.
Vice President Mike Pence was on site while the drugs were offloaded from the Coast Guard’s vessel.
According to CBS News , he gave a speech praising the work of those involved in the bust, saying, “Make no mistake about it, Coasties, your courageous service is saving American lives.”
All five people on board the vessel were turned over to the DEA for prosecution.
Check out the full video of the Coast Guard’s incredible take down below.
h/t CNN
