A man scouring a north Florida beach for sea turtle nests stumbled instead upon more than 70 pounds of cocaine bricks with a street value of $4 million, according to police.
The bizarre discovery was made on Friday morning on Amelia Island beach in Nassau County, News4Jax reported.
The bricks of cocaine, weighing in at 32 kilograms, were wrapped in plastic with a picture of a bald eagle on top, photos show.
“We came out looking for shark teeth, but their value is not quite the street value of the other stuff that’s washing up. But we’re still looking for shark teeth,” Paula Johns, a tourist from South Carolina, told the outlet.
While it’s common for large amounts of packaged drugs to wash ashore in southern Florida where smuggling is rampant, it’s strange for such a large amount of cocaine to be found so far north.
“It’s very rare here in Nassau County,” Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said. “Many years ago, there were bales of marijuana that washed up on the beach, but to my knowledge, something like this washing up is certainly a rare event.”
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