ICE dive unit targets drug smuggling containers

not as easy as it seems. The water was dark green, even on a sunny February morning. Currents are treacherous and unpredictable in the relatively shallow water about fifteen feet below the surface. The divers sometimes encounter sharks, barracuda and eels, and they can feel strong vibrations from the ship inches above.

It is extremely dark, and the divers can only see about four to seven feet ahead, said Alan Vega, a team member who has done about 100 dives over the past three years.

“You have a flashlight and it’s like very burgundy red, which is the paint they put on the ship,” Vega said. “And you’re just kind of scanning along … to see if there is anything unusual. It’s not a nice scenic Caribbean dive.”

A few yards away from the ship, a police boat motors slowly back and forth to prevent other craft from approaching - and just in case there is a problem.

Sometimes a ship is targeted because it spent time in a drug-source country like Colombia. Other times, tips are received about ships that may have had boxes attached during repairs or maintenance when they are taken out of the water.

Other dives are random, said Anthony Mangione, chief of the ICE field office in Miami.

Back on the bay, the ICE team found nothing amiss on the Seaboard Pride during a 20-minute search.

“Everything looks good, but it needs cleaning,” Skidmore told the captain, Karbowiak.

With that, Karbowiak and his ship were cleared for their next trip to the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. Although the divers came up empty, each dive is invaluable training for other missions, including possible attempts by al-Qaida or other terrorist groups to use ports like Miami to bring in explosive devices or blow up the ships themselves.

“Smugglers, terrorists, you know, they adapt,” Vega said. “So it could be a ship coming in from London, who is an ally of the U.S. We’ll search it, because you never know where that wild card is going to be.”

When they aren’t scanning the cargo vessels, the divers also scour waterways when presidents and dignitaries visit. Sometimes they have kept watch while investigating drug trafficking and other crimes, or helped local police locate guns and stolen cars from lakes and quarries. In January, for instance, the team made a grisly find in a canal: a still-unidentified human skull.

It is even more difficult to see during those forays into fresh water, the agents said - and tougher to watch for alligators, crocodiles and poisonous snakes.

“South Florida has lots of different kinds of threats,” Mangione said. “This is a challenging environment to work in.”