"Narcosubmarine" carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine nabbed in Honduras

With help from the U.S. Navy, authorities in Honduras have ~~snorted~~ recovered 2.7 tons of cocaine from a submarine off the Central American nation's Caribbean coast. There is more, they say: the boat's carrying 5 and a half tons, total. AP item:

The submarine-like craft is floating about 15 meters (50 feet) under the surface because the crew tried to sink it. Osorio said Thursday divers will need another two days to recover all the cocaine.

The sub was intercepted two weeks ago, en route to the US from Colombia. More from Reuters.

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The Snowden Principle

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112179617 Christopher Steven Bingel

I’m confused. Why recover the drugs? Why not make sure all the bags are riped open and sink the sub? Then whoever was running the thing loses the cost of the sub, the cost of the drugs, and the profits from the sale of the drugs.
- Andrew Dickerson
  
  Destruction of evidence comes to mind. If they plan to prosecute they need to show it was drugs and offer the contraband up to 3rd party testing.
  - David Shultz
    
    I don’t think so, how are we to prosecute foreign nationals outside our country? Seems more likely the recovered drugs will go to the CIA for bulk sell off
- Cameron Postelwait
  
  they’re probably afraid of how productive the giant squids will get.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Fisher/100000249721778 Daniel Fisher
  
  Umm, ocean life is hard enough without trippin’ on 2.7 tons of cocaine.
  
  - Mr. Fishy
- awjt
  
  If they sink that sub, I’m snorting up the Gulf of Mexico with a McDonald’s straw.
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Maybe losing the profits from the sale of the drugs is not in the gameplan.
NegativeK

@facebook-1112179617:disqus I was wondering the same thing. There’s a pollution problem when it comes to scuttling any boat, but will that cocaine do damage?
- phisrow
  
  Assuming that this is the alkaloid form, it would be readily water-soluble, nudge the local PH slightly in the direction of basic, and probably give anything with a suitable nervous system a hell of a trip, quite possibly a lethal one.
  
  At sea, dilution would probably take care of it more or less quickly; but a few icthyoid cardiac incidents in the vicinity wouldn’t be a major shock…
- bklynchris
  
  But have either of you considered the possibility that the submarine itself, is made out of cocaine?!
rourin_bushi

Yeah, they’re spending an awful lot of time and money to recover… drugs? Helicopters, skilled divers, etc. Only way to recoup that will be to sell those drugs >.>
Rotwang

Gives “Blow the tanks” a whole new meaning.
- muteboy
  
  It gives “Flush the toilet! It’s the pigs!” a whole new meaning.
Donald Petersen

Okay, now… what’s the retail value of five tons of blow? And I also wonder how much of the market that would cover. Is this the coke equivalent of the Exxon Valdez? Or does it just inconvenience a few thousand porn stars, rock singers, and stockbrokers?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Howard/100000736980411 Brian Howard
  
  $446,215,618.67 street value sold by the ounce. When cut its a whole lot more.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Thanks! That’s useful to know. (I won’t ask where you got the current exchange rate. ;^) ) That works out to, what, $90/gram?
    
    Now I’m more interested in NegativeK’s question. I’ve been told we shouldn’t pour our old, expired, or unneeded medications down the sink because of pollution issues. What would five tons of cocaine in a fairly concentrated area do to the sea life?
    
    And would they really mind?
  - David Shultz
    
    I smell a US dept solution here
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=586627419 Billie Jo Wing

Maybe they don’t want other parties trying to recover the cocaine.
JackLean

Do sharks like cocaine?
And I’m asking about the less deadly, non-Wall Street type.
- Brainspore
  
  Oh man, you don’t want to see a Great White on white.
  - t3kna2007
    
    > you don’t want to see a Great White on white
    
    or a blowfish on blow!
    - awjt
      
      Or a Claptonfish on… oh nevermind.
Teller

“The Enemy Blow”
scolbath

I CAN HAZ PRIVATE SUB?
t3kna2007

THAR SHE BLOWS!
http://profiles.google.com/alphaminus Adam Kruckenberg

Seems like it could take less than 2 days to recover MOST of the rest.
- phisrow
  
  I can think of a technique or two to make the divers work faster, if we just happen to have a huge pile of cocaine sitting there taking up space…
travtastic

I don’t understand why they would have that much in a single sub.
- Ashen Victor
  
  Easy to explain:
  
  Because there is not a single submarine.
  They build them in the rain forest mountains in dozens. Some are found by the DEA or national enforcers, others sink in the sea and are lost forever, others get caught, and only one like this one has to reach safe harbor to justify the whole operation.
  - travtastic
    
    These guys need to hire some Kaizen advisors. That’s a hugely inefficient business model.
    - http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young
      
      I would honestly be surprised if they haven’t already.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7DVEAI2OY6E3RWOO6G5PE3DTJQ Rhodeguy
    
    This one looks like it may have been purchased through a rogue nation. I’ve seen the ones they build in the jungles and they look no where near this sophisticated.
- http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young
  
  With big drug shipments like this, the natural economic forces work out something like this: more drug runs = more risk of getting caught + more man power needed + less product (i.e. profit) transported per time spent. Cocaine almost literally grows on trees, and needs just a bit of processing to make into a commercial product; so the Cartels are much less concerned with losing large shipments of cocaine then they are interested in maximizing the revenue earned with successful runs.
  - travtastic
    
    But what about multiple smaller subs leaving at once?
http://thebeatdown.disqus.com Franklin

The hunt for White October
Robert Williams

Believe me, that stuff is hard to snort when it’s wet…
MyMindSpray

What about those US Military planes that drop out of the sky full of cocaine and guns? Or the ones that get stopped at airports and are loaded with guns and drugs?

It’s like a global shell game.

*shifts the 3 shells so the pea is underneath the Honduran shell*
penguinchris

You kind of have to feel sorry for some of the people involved, like the engineers and shipbuilders and sailors. Imagine running a mission like this, being involved from the planning stages to the execution. It takes months to years to get to this point, and then you get caught at the last minute. I bet the guys directly involved with the sub operations hardly even realize that they’re transporting drugs, it’s just a sub mission (not that they don’t know what they’re doing, just that they’d understandably become obsessed with the success of the mission and so wouldn’t think about it).
- ljhw
  
  Many of the sailors on these subs are forced to do the job. They are basically indentured servants who pay off their debt by working for the cartels. Their families are held hostage until they succeed in their mission or die trying.
http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot

Visual reference: 5 tons of sand. http://www.hedgerley.net/greening/?p=44
Garnett Schuyler

This isn’t the first time they’ve done this.

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/20/135574444/ecuador-seizes-drug-running-super-sub
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18707501
Brainspore

If you’re gonna declare a war on drugs, don’t act surprised when the drugs build their own navy to fight it.
davidsfp

Too bad you did not provide a picture of the real “submarine.”
The one with the story is about 20 times bigger than the little semi-submersible craft they were using.
urbanspaceman

“We all live in a narcosubmarine, a narcosubmarine, a narcosubmarine …” :~)
http://sputnik.pl Pies

The estimated total production of cocaine is around 700-800 tonnes a year. It’s a rather sizable bust, but nothing that could really shake the market.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000888183282 Nate Cougill

Economic stimulus plan anyone?
Jeddy Khan

Drug dealers are so rich they have submarines.What has made them so rich – the government which declared them illegal. The risk is the price. The riskier the business gets, drug dealers subs will be equipped with all kinds of weapons. The arms industry will benefit. So it serves the interest the arms industry that drugs remain illegal. It benefits the oil companies – because police will be flying helicopters to check on submarines. Soon the drug dealers will have stealth submarines. Make drugs legal and the drug dealers will become bankrupt, the arms industry will collapse the oil have less fuel and lubricants to sell. Drug addicts would get drugs for 1 cent only So many industries survive because drugs are illegal.
Erik Schweitzer

Here are some more detailed articles, that answers many of the questions raised in the comments here.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsub/20110504.aspx
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsub/20100706.aspx
If you poke around the site, you will find articles about these cocaine subs dating back a decade. This is not a new tactic, although the boats being built have become far more sophisticated. When the cartels started building these things, they were not true submersibles, but had a snorkel to allow the engine (and operators) to breath.