The crew of Canadian Navy vessel HMCS Yellowknife and a US Coast Guard Law Enforcement Team offloaded 44 million dollars worth of cocaine Thursday morning in San Diego.
The 14-hundred kilograms of cocaine was seized from a smugglers vessel nearly seven hundred kilometres southwest of Acapulco, Mexico, on September 5.
HMCS Yellowknife and the Coast Guard enforcement team assigned to the ship were deployed as part of an ongoing counternarcotics operation to patrol the Pacific Ocean off the coast of North America.
The commanding officer of HMCS Yellowknife, Lt. Cmdr. Tyson Babcock, thanked his crew and members of the US Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment team, and says they are proud to contribute to the multinational efforts against illegal trafficking.
The joint task force is part of Operation CARIBBE, a US-led enhanced counter-narcotics operation to intercept drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Since 2006, crews and vessels from Canada have assisted in the disruption or seizure of more than 123 metric tonnes of cocaine.
HMCS Yellowknife is a Kingston-class Coastal Defence Vessel based at CFB Esquimalt.
