More bricks of cocaine found washed up on a beach in the Florida Keys, deputies say

Tourists found a large haul of cocaine on the beach of a Florida Keys resort over the weekend, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.

Guests at the Island of Islands of Islamorada resort, located at mile marker 82 of the Overseas Highway, found the 16 bricks around 11 a.m. Sunday, said Adam Linhardt, sheriff’s office spokesman.

As is policy, the drugs were turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said.

It was the fifth significant find this summer of cocaine found either washed up on the Keys or floating offshore of the archipelago — a common occurrence since the Keys are along the routes that smugglers use to import the contraband into the United States.

Earlier this month, beachgoers found 25 packages of cocaine washed up in Islamorada, an incorporated Upper Keys village, according to the Border Patrol.

In late July, a man diving for lobsters off the Upper Keys found a kilogram package of cocaine floating in the water, the sheriff’s office said.

Earlier that month, a man cleaning a seawall in Key Largo, also in the Upper Keys, found another kilo brick of cocaine, according to the sheriff’s office.

And, in June scuba divers swimming in about 100 feet of water off Key Largo found what they first thought to be a bundle of garbage, but what turned out to be 25 kilos of cocaine floating in the ocean, according to the sheriff’s office.