Rome Italy.- Italian police collected two tons of cocaine, found wrapped in protective plastic and floating in the sea off eastern Sicily.
The financial police squad estimated that the recent capture would have raised some 400 million euros (almost 450 million dollars) in street sales.
The cocaine packages were tied with netting, the corporation said in a statement.
There was just enough plastic wrap to keep the coke from getting wet without making it heavy and possibly sinking.
Investigators hypothesized that it was left at sea by a freighter as part of a plan for another ship to arrive and take it ashore.
Police planes flew over the sea area as a precaution to detect other bundles of drugs that may have come loose from the network.
In total, the Police collected more than 1,600 packages of cocaine contained in 70 floating packages, according to the statement.
