From European news sources to mainstream American media, from offbeat and online new organizations to journalists of every age, open water swimmers got in the news and their swims went viral for all the wrong reasons.

Young swimmers who are very competent in open ocean conditions would serve as smugglers. They would swim in the open water – in rough water and at night from the coast of Morocco at precise GPS coordinates, dropped off by cargo ships coming from Columbia. The swimmers would grab the packages and then carry the bundles of cocaine to ships bound for Europe.

Imagine floating and then swimming next to a hull of a large ship – with its wake tossing you about in the darkness with currents and waves – to throw the bundles to their accomplices on the Europe-bound ships. And then swim back to shore, all in a dangerous night’s work.

This monkey technique is used elsewhere in the world where drugs would be dropped from low-flying planes or cargo ships in the ocean. Then the contraband is collected by others and placed on marine vessels near the destination country (e.g., Spain or East or West Coasts of the United States). The Spanish police announced the monkey technique used “youngsters who are good swimmers and from low-income families to load the drug on the vessels that were on the high seas“.

For more information, read here.

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