MAJURO — Scuba dive operators at Bikini Atoll discovered 25 plastic bags containing an estimated 71 pounds of cocaine washed up on a deserted beach that were taken into police custody on Wednesday.
Marshall Islands officials were notified of the discovery Monday and a police narcotics officer flew out on Wednesday morning’s once-a-week flight to the distant atoll to collect the narcotics that have an estimated street value of $750,000.
Bikini, the former nuclear test site for 23 American atomic explosions, is now a high-end scuba dive resort where a fleet of World War II battleships and submarines sunk in 150 feet of water attract divers from around the world. Divers visiting Bikini went out Sunday for a picnic on Aeomen, one of the 23 islands in Bikini’s necklace of low-lying coral islands, where they discovered the “bricks” of white powder heavily encased in plastic sitting on the beach of the uninhabited island.
Majuro-based Bikini liaison official Jack Niedenthal said this is the second time that professionally wrapped narcotics have been discovered washed up on the beach at Bikini. Other shipments of cocaine have appeared similarly and mysteriously on at least two other atolls in the Marshall Islands in the past several years.
Speculation from police is that the narcotics discovered at Bikini could have been dumped from a vessel attempting to run drugs into the United States. It could have happened as far from the Marshall Islands as off the coast of California—more than 4,000 miles to the east—when a drug-running vessel was in danger of discovery by U.S. Coast Guard or drug enforcement officials, Niedenthal said.
Niedenthal said both Marshall Islands and U.S. Embassy officials were notified of the discovery. “I don’t want to see these drugs get into the community here,” Niedenthal said.
