The French navy has seized nearly 10 tons of cocaine worth more than $600 million from a fishing vessel off the coast of West Africa, French authorities said on Thursday.
The seizure by two navy ships on Monday followed a tip-off by anti-drug and maritime intelligence authorities and British police, authorities in France’s northwestern Atlantic Maritime region said.
The operation was part of France’s Corymbe naval mission, which has been deployed in the Gulf of Guinea since 1990 to ensure security in an area where piracy is fairly common.
“In total, 9.6 tons of cocaine with a market value of nearly 519 million euros ($609 million) was seized from a boat,” the Atlantic Maritime prefecture said, adding that the vessel was not registered in any country.
Authorities released images of the operation, showing a naval ship and military helicopter and officers unloading packages of the purported drugs.
By the end of August, the French navy had already seized nearly six tons of cocaine off the coast of West Africa.
French authorities have intercepted 54.1 tons of drugs at sea since the beginning of 2025, the navy said in a social media post on Thursday.
Cocaine has been found on fishing vessels around the globe in recent months. Earlier this year, the U.S. Coast Guard seized roughly 10,000 pounds of cocaine from a fishing boat in the Atlantic Ocean. That haul was worth an estimated $74 million. Last December, police seized 2.3 tons of cocaine and arrested 13 people in raids after the suspects’ fishing boat broke down off the coast of Australia.
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