[420 Girl]

In one of the largest marijuana seizures in U.S. Coast Guard history, a cutter scooped up nearly 10,000 pounds of marijuana thrown overboard by a speedboat off the coast of Baja California earlier this week.

The marijuana, which was wrapped up in 137 steamer-trunk-sized bales, had an estimated street value of $32 million, said Lt. Kristopher Ensley, the commander of the cutter that recovered the drugs.

It was "a huge bust," Ensley said Thursday. "My whole crew is joking that we're the reason a dime bag is now being called a quarter bag."

The cutter Narwhal, based in Newport Beach, was patrolling international waters about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego when it saw the speedboat on its radar screen late Sunday afternoon, Ensley said. The Narwhal began tailing the boat as it headed north toward the U.S. and noticed that it sped up when the sun went down. The boat, which was about 30-feet long, open-hulled and low to the water, also did not have any lights, the Coast Guard said.

Ensley said the Narwhal called out to the boat to stop around 7:30 p.m. The boat took off in the direction of Mexico, and its crew -- made up of about four people -- started jettisoning the drug cargo in the ocean, leaving a trail of bobbing bales about four miles long, Ensley said.

Narwhal chased the boat, but it had moved into Mexico's waters by about 8 p.m. Ensley then turned the case over to the Mexican Navy and headed back for the marijuana.

Working through the night with night-vision goggles, flares and spotlights, the Narwhal's crew recovered 136 bales. A helicopter found one more Monday morning. That afternoon, Ensley turned the drugs over to a federal narcotics task force in San Diego, which is investigating the case. The bales tested positive for marijuana.

The haul on Monday dwarfed Ensley's other recent marijuana recovery in the same area in September, when he picked up about 330 pounds. The Narwhal's seizure also added up to nearly half the amount seized by the Coast Guard from October 2007 to September 2008.

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