Hurricane Dorian appears to have sent more than just high winds and heavy rains to Florida.
On Tuesday, as the storm skirted the coastline, a beachcomber made an unusual discovery — a brick of cocaine.
Dorian was initially projected to hit Florida as its main target. The hurricane ended up only brushing the state, but not without pummelling shores with a dose of severe weather.
The coast saw high winds and high tides on Tuesday and Wednesday. While there were concerns swirling about the safety of turtle nests being raked by the waves, the ocean exposing illegal drugs was not what one storm-watcher expected to stumble upon.
The City of Melbourne said a beachgoer, watching the rough surf in Paradise Beach Park on Tuesday discovered the package and alerted an officer on patrol.
“(It) appeared to have washed up from the ocean,” city spokesperson Chery Mall told Global News.
When the officer checked it out, he found an item “wrapped in a way that was consistent with illegal drugs,” she said.
In a photograph provided by the city, the letters D-I-A-M-A-N-T are visible in black lettering on the package.
WATCH: Hurricane Dorian moves slowly along Florida coastline
“The item was taken into custody,” Mall said. “The contents field-tested positive for cocaine. Our narcotics will conduct a follow-up investigation.”
Once the investigation is complete, the cocaine will be destroyed.
A similar discovery was made this week in Cocoa Beach, about 20 miles north of Melbourne.
Local police there reportedly found a duffel bag that had washed ashore containing 15 bricks of cocaine.
In Orlando — the largest nearby city — one kilogram of cocaine has a street value worth approximately $20,000 to $30,000 USD ($27,000 to $40,000 CAD), police told NBC.
The duffel bag and its contents were turned over to the U.S. Custom and Border Protection.
Dorian spent much of Tuesday offshore Florida, parallel to the east coast, as a Category 2 hurricane.
It swept by on Wednesday where it grew back into a Category 3 storm before creeping into the southeast U.S. — threatening low-lying coasts from Georgia to Virginia.
The National Hurricane Center expects Dorian to maintain this intensity for several days and may not weaken until Saturday.
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