perocity
06-21-2010, 12:23 PM
Talk about the big one that got away.
Ryan Danoff was fishing with two friends about four miles off Hollywood beach Sunday when he spied what appeared to be a mast on the horizon.
Funny thing: There was no boat underneath it.
Danoff, a Fort Lauderdale fish farmer who's on the water at least three days a week, aimed his 31-foot center console Fishy Business at the mysterious upright and found himself eye to eye with a periscope.
"It was crazy," he said. "If it was just myself out there I wouldn't believe what I saw."
Danoff moved closer. "It took off," he said. Very fast, about 20 knots. The periscope sank beneath the waves, and whatever was below the surface blew its ballast, sending aloft a mighty hiccup of bubbles. After five minutes the sea lay once again undisturbed.
Danoff, 30, reported the episode to the Coast Guard. They said they'd get back to him, but never did.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Barry Bena said Danoff's information went to the proper authorities. "As of right now, they're still looking into it," he said.
So could it have been a Navy sub taking a peek at the beach? "It's kind of uncommon," Bena said. "But it's a definite possibility."
Source: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/boater-chases-mysterious-periscope-off-hollywood-beach-752917.html
It's the Navy or it could be drug runners.
Check this story out.
Drug-Sub Culture
7273
Bigfoot, a drug-smuggling submarine, is now on display at Truman Annex, Naval Air Station Key West in Florida.
THE CRAFT FIRST surfaced like something out of a science-fiction movie. It was November 2006, and a Coast Guard cutter spotted a strange blur on the ocean 100 miles off Costa Rica. As the cutter approached, what appeared to be three snorkels poking up out of the water became visible. Then something even more surprising was discovered attached to the air pipes: a homemade submarine carrying four men, an AK-47 and three tons of cocaine.
7272
Today, the 49-foot-long vessel bakes on concrete blocks outside the office of Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich in Key West, Fla. Here, at the Joint Interagency Task Force South, Nimmich commands drug-interdiction efforts in the waters south of the United States. Steely-eyed, gray-haired and dressed in a blue jumpsuit, he showed me the homemade sub one hot February afternoon like a hunter flaunting his catch. “We had rumors and indicators of this for a very long period beforehand,” he told me, which is why they nicknamed it Bigfoot.
This kind of vessel — a self-propelled, semisubmersible made by hand in the jungles of Colombia — is no longer quite so mythic: four were intercepted in January alone. But because of their ability to elude radar systems, these subs are almost impossible to detect; only an estimated 14 percent of them are stopped. And perhaps as many as 70 of them will be made this year, up from 45 or so in 2007, according to a task-force spokesman. Made for as little as $500,000 each and assembled in fewer than 90 days, they are now thought to carry nearly 30 percent of Colombia’s total cocaine exports.
These subs are the most ingenious innovation in the drug trade. But as Joe Biden told Congress last July, that’s not the only reason they pose “a significant danger to the United States.” In late January, a Sri Lankan Army task force found three semisubs being built by Tamil rebels in the jungles of Mullaitivu. “With this discovery the [Tamil] will go down in history as the first terrorist organization to develop underwater weapons,” the Sri Lankan ministry of defense declared.
Nimmich said, “If you can carry 10 tons of cocaine, you can carry 10 tons of anything.”
Bigfoot isn’t just a trophy. It’s a reminder of the ever-escalating cat-and-mouse game of drug interdiction. Before the subs, the battle focused on fishing vessels and “go fast” boats. In 2006, improved intelligence and radar detection from helicopters and cutters helped remove a record 256 metric tons of cocaine from what is estimated to have been more than a thousand metric tons that moved through the U.S. and Central and South American transit zones that year. But that led to the next wave of smuggling vessels. “Like any business, if you’re losing more and more of your product, you try to find a different way,” Nimmich said.
Early drug-sub experiments date back to the mid-1990s. In 1995, an émigré from the former Soviet Union was arrested in Miami after trying to broker the sale of an old Soviet sub from the Russian mafia to the Colombian cartels. In 2000, the Colombian police found Russian documents scattered in a warehouse in a suburb of Bogotá alongside a half-built, 100-foot-long submarine capable of carrying 200 tons of cocaine.
Building a fully submersible submarine is complicated and indiscreet, requiring highly skilled workers and a manufacturing facility that’s too big to be easily hidden. The alternative: semisubmersibles that, though considerably smaller than the sub found in the warehouse, can carry five times as much cocaine as a common fishing vessel. Nimmich said the rise of semisubs has been traced to two unnamed men, a Pakistani and a Sri Lankan, who in early 2006 provided plans to the Colombians for building semisubs quickly, stealthily and out of cheap, commonly available materials. One of the biggest concerns when making a drug sub is that a laborer will reveal its location before the work is done. For this reason, the 15 or 20 people brought in to build a craft remain on site for the duration. They set up a campsite in the dense brush, relying on generators for electricity and make the ships by hand. When I asked Nimmich if he was impressed by their craftsmanship, he arched a brow and said: “You ever try to build something in your backyard? They’re building these in the jungles.”
AT THE BEGINNING of last September, a 44-year-old fisherman named Padro Mercedes Arboleda-Palacios left the town of Buenaventura for a two-day trip upriver into the Colombian jungle. After staying in a small hut for several days, he was led by four men with rifles on another boat to a vessel in the woods surrounded by six armed guards. It was el ataúd, the coffin, the nickname Colombians gave to semisubs after a few were rumored to have disappeared at sea.
Ryan Danoff was fishing with two friends about four miles off Hollywood beach Sunday when he spied what appeared to be a mast on the horizon.
Funny thing: There was no boat underneath it.
Danoff, a Fort Lauderdale fish farmer who's on the water at least three days a week, aimed his 31-foot center console Fishy Business at the mysterious upright and found himself eye to eye with a periscope.
"It was crazy," he said. "If it was just myself out there I wouldn't believe what I saw."
Danoff moved closer. "It took off," he said. Very fast, about 20 knots. The periscope sank beneath the waves, and whatever was below the surface blew its ballast, sending aloft a mighty hiccup of bubbles. After five minutes the sea lay once again undisturbed.
Danoff, 30, reported the episode to the Coast Guard. They said they'd get back to him, but never did.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Barry Bena said Danoff's information went to the proper authorities. "As of right now, they're still looking into it," he said.
So could it have been a Navy sub taking a peek at the beach? "It's kind of uncommon," Bena said. "But it's a definite possibility."
Source: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/boater-chases-mysterious-periscope-off-hollywood-beach-752917.html
It's the Navy or it could be drug runners.
Check this story out.
Drug-Sub Culture
7273
Bigfoot, a drug-smuggling submarine, is now on display at Truman Annex, Naval Air Station Key West in Florida.
THE CRAFT FIRST surfaced like something out of a science-fiction movie. It was November 2006, and a Coast Guard cutter spotted a strange blur on the ocean 100 miles off Costa Rica. As the cutter approached, what appeared to be three snorkels poking up out of the water became visible. Then something even more surprising was discovered attached to the air pipes: a homemade submarine carrying four men, an AK-47 and three tons of cocaine.
7272
Today, the 49-foot-long vessel bakes on concrete blocks outside the office of Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich in Key West, Fla. Here, at the Joint Interagency Task Force South, Nimmich commands drug-interdiction efforts in the waters south of the United States. Steely-eyed, gray-haired and dressed in a blue jumpsuit, he showed me the homemade sub one hot February afternoon like a hunter flaunting his catch. “We had rumors and indicators of this for a very long period beforehand,” he told me, which is why they nicknamed it Bigfoot.
This kind of vessel — a self-propelled, semisubmersible made by hand in the jungles of Colombia — is no longer quite so mythic: four were intercepted in January alone. But because of their ability to elude radar systems, these subs are almost impossible to detect; only an estimated 14 percent of them are stopped. And perhaps as many as 70 of them will be made this year, up from 45 or so in 2007, according to a task-force spokesman. Made for as little as $500,000 each and assembled in fewer than 90 days, they are now thought to carry nearly 30 percent of Colombia’s total cocaine exports.
These subs are the most ingenious innovation in the drug trade. But as Joe Biden told Congress last July, that’s not the only reason they pose “a significant danger to the United States.” In late January, a Sri Lankan Army task force found three semisubs being built by Tamil rebels in the jungles of Mullaitivu. “With this discovery the [Tamil] will go down in history as the first terrorist organization to develop underwater weapons,” the Sri Lankan ministry of defense declared.
Nimmich said, “If you can carry 10 tons of cocaine, you can carry 10 tons of anything.”
Bigfoot isn’t just a trophy. It’s a reminder of the ever-escalating cat-and-mouse game of drug interdiction. Before the subs, the battle focused on fishing vessels and “go fast” boats. In 2006, improved intelligence and radar detection from helicopters and cutters helped remove a record 256 metric tons of cocaine from what is estimated to have been more than a thousand metric tons that moved through the U.S. and Central and South American transit zones that year. But that led to the next wave of smuggling vessels. “Like any business, if you’re losing more and more of your product, you try to find a different way,” Nimmich said.
Early drug-sub experiments date back to the mid-1990s. In 1995, an émigré from the former Soviet Union was arrested in Miami after trying to broker the sale of an old Soviet sub from the Russian mafia to the Colombian cartels. In 2000, the Colombian police found Russian documents scattered in a warehouse in a suburb of Bogotá alongside a half-built, 100-foot-long submarine capable of carrying 200 tons of cocaine.
Building a fully submersible submarine is complicated and indiscreet, requiring highly skilled workers and a manufacturing facility that’s too big to be easily hidden. The alternative: semisubmersibles that, though considerably smaller than the sub found in the warehouse, can carry five times as much cocaine as a common fishing vessel. Nimmich said the rise of semisubs has been traced to two unnamed men, a Pakistani and a Sri Lankan, who in early 2006 provided plans to the Colombians for building semisubs quickly, stealthily and out of cheap, commonly available materials. One of the biggest concerns when making a drug sub is that a laborer will reveal its location before the work is done. For this reason, the 15 or 20 people brought in to build a craft remain on site for the duration. They set up a campsite in the dense brush, relying on generators for electricity and make the ships by hand. When I asked Nimmich if he was impressed by their craftsmanship, he arched a brow and said: “You ever try to build something in your backyard? They’re building these in the jungles.”
AT THE BEGINNING of last September, a 44-year-old fisherman named Padro Mercedes Arboleda-Palacios left the town of Buenaventura for a two-day trip upriver into the Colombian jungle. After staying in a small hut for several days, he was led by four men with rifles on another boat to a vessel in the woods surrounded by six armed guards. It was el ataúd, the coffin, the nickname Colombians gave to semisubs after a few were rumored to have disappeared at sea.