Cocaine washing up on Dauphin Island a 'rare' event

On Saturday, two beachgoers strolling near Dauphin Island’s West End discovered a pair of plastic-wrapped packages, each a little larger than a brick, containing cocaine.

Among the miscellanea that can wash up on beaches, drugs, usually bales of marijuana or blocks of cocaine, are rare, local police and federal officials say.

“It’s not common at all,” said Tom Wade, resident agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Mobile office. “I would call it an anomaly.”

In fact, New Orleans-based U.S. Coast Guard investigators can cull only one other example from recent memory: a bale of marijuana that washed up near New Orleans, said Lt. James McKnight, a Mobile-based spokesman for the Coast Guard.

Sometimes local police departments will handle such cases in their jurisdictions. Not often, though, said Gulf Shores Police Chief Arthur Bourne.

“I can’t recall the last time it’s happened,” he said.

It might have been a Saturday in June 1993. A child found two kilos of cocaine about a mile east of the city’s main public beach. The next afternoon, two teenagers from Kentucky stumbled upon a similar surprise west of Little Lagoon pass.

“That’s probably the last one,” Bourne agreed.