The drugs keep washing into the Keys. Cocaine brick found floating in seaweed, police say

A brick of cocaine was found Monday after it washed up on someone’s property in the Lower Keys, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said.

Lawn care workers found the package floating in the seaweed at a waterfront home in the 15000 block of Old State Road 4A on Sugarloaf Key, sheriff’s office spokesman Adam Linhardt said.

It weighed 2 1/2 pounds, or a little bit over one kilogram, and is worth $56,000 on the street, said Adam Hoffner, spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol

Monroe Deputy Donald Stullken went to the home at 11:21 a.m. after someone reported that workers had found the brick on his property.

Border Patrol agents seized the drugs.

Monday’s find was one more instance of cocaine packages washing ashore in the Keys lately.

On June 22, someone called the sheriff’s office after finding a package of cocaine, which turned out to weigh 2.3 pounds, inside Bahia Honda State Park between mile marker 36 and 37.

But those are chips compared to some contraband found in May in the Keys.

At the start of May, almost $2 million worth of marijuana and cocaine was found in the waters off the Keys.

Weeks later, more than $1.4 million worth of cocaine washed up at Bahia Honda State Park. A park worker found 23 bricks of cocaine, which weighed 63 pounds, officials said.

Gwen Filosa

Miami Herald

Gwen Filosa covers Key West and the Lower Florida Keys for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald and lives in Key West. She was part of the staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune that in 2005 won two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She graduated from Indiana University.