Around 19 kilogrammes of crystal methamphetamine were found in 19 bags left floating in the sea off the Klaeng district of Rayong on Sunday morning, in a fresh incident which followed a series of previous incidents involving the same type of narcotic drugs being found abandoned in seas in the nearby eastern provinces, police said.
Klaeng police said the local police were alerted to the latest discovery of these bags of drugs by some fishermen who came across the floating bags while going out to the sea in their fishing trawler.
When closely examined, the crystal meth was found in plastic containers stuffed in these brownish bags, police said, adding each white plastic bag was printed with a logo of silver and gold fishes which are accompanied by some letters of the Chinese alphabet.
The police surmised that this haul has something to do with another 18kg of crystal meth previously found in similar bags washed ashore in Laem Ngop district of neighbouring Trat.
The authorities also believe these two incidents were connected with the more than 100kg of crystal meth found and retrieved for inspection earlier on several occasions in neighbouring Chanthaburi, said a source.
These drugs were believed to have been produced outside of Thailand, smuggled into Thailand through the North, and then smuggled on to an eastern province where they were loaded onto a speedboat which was supposed to deliver these bags to a cargo ship, said the same source.
The source, citing a police theory, said the speedboat might have sunk, or the smugglers might have changed their minds and thrown these bags into the water and fled for an unknown reason.
Between 2020 and 2021, crystal meth was found in packages left floating in the seas on more than ten occasions in which the drug totalling 1.5 tonnes was seized for inspection, said the same source.