Old photo shows drug submarine near Mexico, not Solomon Islands
- Published on August 19, 2025 at 05:22
- 4 min read
- By Dene-Hern CHEN, AFP Australia
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"Drug submarine found in Solomons raises Pacific alarm," reads an August 7, 2025 Facebook post by a user in Fiji, a southeastern neighbour of Solomon Islands.
The post -- which got more than 196,000 views and was shared over 600 times -- details how the "startling discovery" off the coast of Solomon Islands' Isabel Province by a fisherman has incited concern "about the region's growing role in the international drug trade".
Similar posts were also posted by users in Fiji and Tonga.
Commenters expressed concern about the state of the submarine and the circumstances leading to it being in the waters around Solomon Islands.
"It sure does look beat up. Perhaps a drug drop that went wrong or the weather scared the captain off the boat. Who knows what happened!" said one user, calling it "an eye opener for the South Pacific".
Another said the submarine was "the first of its kind to be seen in the Solomons". "It's a hard evidence of drug trafficking across the Pacific vast ocean," the commenter said.
These fears are not unfounded -- Pacific islands like the Solomon Islands and nearby Fiji sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean-trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia (archived link).
But the photo shared with the Facebook post is about a decade old and was not taken anywhere near the region.
Solomon Islands vessel
A vessel was indeed found by Ben Maenu'u -- a fisherman who is also a Solomon Islands MP -- on July 28, according to a Facebook video he posted of a sea-weathered vessel that he and his fishing crew discovered between Isabel and Ramos islands (archived here and here).
"This is what i found yesterday at the Sea when we out for our fishing trip... Unexpected to see this," he wrote on his July 29 post.
The incident was reported by local daily newspaper The Island Sun, and Maenu'u's video was also shared by the Pacific arm of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (archived here and here).
A closer inspection of his video showed visual differences between the vessel he found -- like the opening on the barnacle-crusted tail edge and the lack of a screen near its hatch -- and the one shared by the Fiji user.
Maenu'u said Solomon Islands authorities were carrying out an investigation into the old tanker.
"My team went fishing and we saw it floating so I had to get a team to tow it back to shore," he said in a text message to AFP on August 18, adding that he could not confirm if it was used to transport drugs.
"It must have sunk and floated up again. Our team have been looking into it."
US photo
A comb through AFP's photo archives shows that that an uncropped version of the photo was first released by the US Coast Guard on August 6, 2015, after they intercepted a vessel which was spotted south of Mexico the previous month (archived link).
The words "U.S. Coast Guard" are on the boat intercepting the submersible, but is out of frame of the image proliferating on social media.
"The Coast Guard seized 12,000 pounds (5,400 kilograms) of cocaine from four smugglers on a semi-submersible ship, the agency said August 6," says the caption, which added that the drugs were worth $181 million.
A reverse image search also found that the massive bust was reported by several media outlets, which used the same photo (archived here and here).
AFP has previously fact-checked other claims related to Pacific island nations.
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