Report of cocaine lost at sea lures crowds to French beaches

Officials said reports that police officers were attempting to intercept an illegal shipment dumped off the Aquitaine coast had attracted would-be sellers to beaches in south-west France. Local media reported that a drug transfer in the Bay of Biscay between a ship and a smaller boat had gone wrong, although it is not clear exactly where the spill happened. No drugs have so far been found, and investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the information was false.

Among those searching is Leina, who told RMC radio near the town of Le Porge she had been looking for four days and had done almost the entire coast. "What motivates me is simply money. I can rebuild my life, buy a house, a car... I'm going to be 30, after a while you have to move forward. It's not with €100 ($160) per day that I'm going to advance anywhere. So I'm looking for the treasure like everyone else."

Another searcher, Guillaume, said he was willing to risk 10 years in prison and €7.5 million, the maximum penalty for unlawful transport, possession, acquisition, supply and use of narcotics, for the chance to find the drugs. "It's dangerous indeed, but life is hard, so it doesn't matter if we don't do things legally. What we want is just the money, to get by a little," he told RMC.

Footage by news channel TF1 showed groups of young men loitering on the beaches of Biscarrosse, in Landes, before pulling up their masks and scattering as drones approached. One of the men said the group had travelled three hours and spent the night hoping to find some of the cache. Police stopped the group and conducted identity checks.

Gendarmes have patrolled the coast, and one town has closed its beaches. Xavier Labrouche, head of the Vieux-Boucau municipal police, told France 3 police had noticed “a rather unusual number of people out at night for this time of year”. Martial Zaninetti, mayor of Le Porge in the Gironde, announced the closure of the town's beaches on Wednesday until further notice after security cameras showed “200 lamps” wandering the beach at night. He denounced motorbikes and quad bikes that have trampled the coast and were “destroying the ecosystem”. Police also fined several people who tried to enter a military-controlled site in Landes on Wednesday.

The area has seen cocaine wash ashore before. In 2019, police recovered 1010 kilograms of cocaine in an operation named "White Tide" in which bottles and packets washed up on beaches from Brittany to Landes. The drugs, which originated from Colombia, had been unloaded off the coast of Gironde. "We have already had to deal with this type of situation and we have very specific instructions to prevent people from getting their hands on these bundles," Pierre Froustey, mayor of Vieux-Boucau, told France 3.