Bobbing for pot on Sanibel Island or adventures in paradise

Sanibel shellers get stoned!

Ellen Hamil

For several winters during the mid-to-late 1970’s I met my parents on Sanibel Island, Florida.  They would drive from Concord, N.H., and I would fly from Albuquerque, N.M.  We had found a place along the Gulf coast, nestled in the Florida pines, where we rented a cottage.  There was a path through the sand and pine needles to the beach.  Behind the cottage was a pond with a grandfather-sized alligator that thankfully kept to himself.

Sanibel is known for its shelling.  Every tide delivers a multitude of shells to the shore and every morning the shellers appear.  They are young, old, male and female; but most notably they are stooped.  You don’t find a shell while looking straight ahead.

One morning my father and I arose early to walk the beach.  After a mile, we returned to our cottage where my mother was preparing breakfast.  Soon we heard helicopters that appeared to be flying close to the ground – back and forth.  I went out to investigate.  I saw the helicopters flying low over the water.  They were shooting at something.  Several Coast Guard boats were scurrying back and forth.  With all the commotion and all the noise, I wondered if we were at war.  Cuba was close.  Could that be possible?  More and more people were emerging from their cottages and hotel rooms, and everyone was asking “what’s going on?”

I noticed something was being loaded onto the boats.  Something big.  These “somethings” could best be described as larger than a bale of hay.  Some of the boats were riding low in the water as they were piled high with these bundles.   Soon the gathered crowd determined the helicopters were shooting a dye into the water to mark a spot where these bundles were floating.  The boats sped to the designated areas and hoisted the bundles aboard.  The mystery still wasn’t solved.

Next, another dimension was added to the scene.  Four-wheel drive jeeps appeared on the beach.  We were asked to move aside, to get out of the way. We moved but only after persuading a jeep driver to tell us what was happening.

It was a big drug bust.  The night before a freighter from South America unloaded hundreds of bundles of marijuana onto a dozen fishing boats.  The marijuana was wrapped very carefully in heavy plastic.  The Coast Guard had been keeping an eye out for Russian trawlers said to be raiding American crab traps.  When the Coast Guard saw the fishing boats gathered, it approached them to inquire on friendly terms about the Russian trawlers.  The fishing boat captains and crew wasted no time in dumping the bundles of pot overboard and hightailing out to sea.

The bales were so heavy they didn’t float on the water.  Instead they bobbed along just below the surface.  The activity involved in retrieving these bobbing bales of banned bliss went on all morning.  Before lunch my father and I took a swim.  I need to note here that when walking in the water, each step you take causes the sand to rise like a cloud of dust making it impossible to see anything on the bottom or around you.  I suddenly felt something rub up against me.  I ran out of the water faster than I might have imagined.  I looked back and just then a wave broke and in its crest I could see a large bale bobbing.  I watched as it approached the shore.  Others spotted it, and then someone went into the water to help it along.  He was joined by someone else.  

The bale was pushed, tugged and dragged ashore.  A knife appeared.  The wrapping was cut, torn, pulled away from the weed.  A hand reached out and grabbed some.  Soon shellers, bathers and bystanders were involved in a frenzy to see how much they could carry away before the shore police found the bale.  These shellers weren’t stooped.  They were standing tall and walking fast.

Late that night the small Sanibel Island Police Station was broken into and several bundles of marijuana disappeared.  



February, 2006