“Narco sub” loaded with 6.5 tons of cocaine seized in Atlantic Ocean with help from DEA, Portuguese police say

Officers recently confiscated nearly 6.5 tons of cocaine from a semi-submersible vessel, or so-called “narco sub,” intercepted off the Azores while bound for the Iberian peninsula, Portugal’s judicial police said.

The bust, dubbed Operation Nautilus, amounts to nearly a quarter of the record 23 tons seized across the whole of 2024 in Portugal, often considered one of the first points of entry for the drug into Europe. Drug traffickers have been caught using semi-submersible vessels to smuggle cocaine while attempting to evade detection.

The vessel was intercepted “in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, around 500 nautical miles” south of Portugal’s Azores archipelago, the judicial police statement said.

Five crew members were onboard the vessel, which was used by an international crime ring, the statement added.  Police released video of the operation, showing the vessel loaded with orange packages as well as four suspects with their faces blurred out.

Besides the Portuguese navy and air force, international partners including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the British National Crime Agency and the Spanish Guardia Civil contributed to the bust, according the police.

Portuguese police said that the operation happened recently, without specifying the date.

Many “narco subs” cannot fully dive like a true submarine, but some are able to dip completely underwater.

Most of the cocaine smuggled into Portugal comes across the sea from Latin America.

Though most commonly seen off the coast of Colombia, “narco subs” have been spotted across the globe in recent months. 

In January, a “narco sub” broke in two pieces as a fishing boat was towing it to a port in northwestern Spain. In November, the Mexican Navy said it seized about 8,000 pounds of cocaine aboard a “narco sub” about 150 miles off the resort of Acapulco.  In September, the U.S. Coast Guard said that it had offloaded more than $54 million worth of cocaine  — including over 1,200 pounds of drugs that were seized from a “narco sub.”