Smugglers dumped millions in drugs off Maine’s coast. Struggling fishermen saw a jackpot.
One cold night in April 1983, narcotics officers arrived at the Northeast Harbor Marina on Mount Desert Island. The drug-sniffing dog with them strained at the end of a leash. They’d received an anonymous tip that some of the scallop boats in the area had been carrying illegal drugs along with their catches. They waited in the shadows, preparing to pounce on the evidence that would confirm the rumors. Out on the dark waters, a 42-foot scallop dragger named F/V Joshua’s Delight glided toward the harbor. One of the fishermen aboard that night was my father, Frank Ryan, then 34. That night, my father hoped his luck was changing. But he wasn’t thinking about scallops. While dredging the ocean floor that afternoon, their nets had caught something else. When they hauled them up, among thousands of scallops were chunks of a sticky, leathery substance shaped like the sole of a shoe. Dense and potent, you could smell it the instant it came on deck: hashish. >click to read< 11:11
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