Bureau of Customs (BOC) Assistant Commissioner Vincent Maronilla bared Saturday, Oct. 9, that illegal drug traders are now using open seas to smuggle drugs, instead of just placing them inside magnetic lifters and cylinders to avoid detection.
"It's called open seas smuggling. They're now doing open sea smuggling because we are surrounded by the ocean, because we are an archipelago," Maronilla said in Filipino in a public briefing.
"Because of our strict monitoring and because of our modern equipment, drug smugglers resort to using ," he added.
What smugglers do, according to Maronilla, is that they throw small boats equipped with floating devices and containing drugs into the shallow area of the ocean that are then fetched and brought into the shorelines.
They choose areas wherein there is no presence of a Customs officer to monitor or check goods, he added.
"So what we're doing now is we coordinate with the Philippine Coast Guard and the Philippine Navy to put these areas under their watch," he said.