Fisherman locates £1.8m drugs dump

September 1995

A chance find by a fishing trawler led to the recovery of a major haul of cannabis resin from the seabed off the Wexford coast last weekend.

Personnel from the Customs National Drugs Team, the Customs Maritime Unit and the Garda Sub-Aqua Club unearthed 180 kilos of cannabis with a street value of £1.8 million in a week-long search operation.

Drugs Team officers moved in after the skipper of a local trawler handed up a 30 kilo bale of cannabis, worth £300,000, which he hauled in while fishing off the coast two weeks ago.

Confirming that the total find was valued at over £2 million, a spokeswoman for the National Drugs Team said the fisherman passed the cannabis bale on to the gardai, along with details of where he had found it.

The Customs launched an intensive search of the area and with the assistance of the Garda Sub-Aqua Club uncovered a much larger quantity of the drug about four miles off the Hook area of the Wexford coast.

The Customs spokeswoman said it was believed the consignment, which of Moroccan origin, was destined for the Irish market because it was found so far up the coastline.

Cannabis resin is a bulky item to transport, she said, and it was not unusual for drug smugglers to dump a consignment from a larger vessel which might attract attention from members of the Customs maritime team patrolling the coastline.

Another boat could then be used to recover the consignment in smaller amounts during night-time hours, when the risk of detection might not be as great.

The National Drugs Team recently launched a Coastwatch information pack for members of the public and fishermen in particular, asking them to watch out for suspicious activity in coastal areas.

The Wexford find was evidence that the initiative was paying off, said the spokeswoman, adding that the general public were ‘the eyes and ears of the coast’.