Spanish police refloat homemade drug semi-submersible

MADRID (AP) — Civil Guard police in northwestern Spain have refloated a homemade semi-submersible vessel they suspect may have been used to transport cocaine. The 16-meter (52-foot) fiberglass vessel was hauled to the surface Tuesday a day after it was spotted a kilometer (a half-mile) off the coast in the Arousa estuary. It will be towed to a nearby port where police will investigate its contents. A similar vessel with three metric tons of cocaine was found in another estuary in 2019. Similar drug-smuggling vessels have been discovered in the Atlantic Ocean. They aren’t so common in Europe. The vessels lie low in the water to escape detection and rarely are able to fully submerge.