“It’s just piles upon piles of bundles.”

That’s the best way he knew to paint the scene of what it looked like to stand among $114.1 million dollars in cocaine and marijuana.

The offload of these drugs will happen at Naval Station Mayport Friday morning, and Lieutenant Commander Corey Barker says this most recent load is part of a bigger operation to intercept drugs coming into the US.

“We have anywhere from four to five ships operating in South America and most of them do stop in Mayport to drop off their confiscated drugs,” he says.

Friday’s shipment comes aboard the USS Carr, which is homeported in Norfolk.  Barker says Mayport is that convenient midway point for many of these ships to stop through to unload the drugs.  At Mayport, law enforcement will take control of the 1.5 tons of cocaine and 1.8 tons of marijuana.

“The amount of this seizure is pretty typical of the ships operating down in South America, off the coast of Panama and Columbia,” Barker says.

Operation Martillo has run since January 2012 and intercepted an estimated $3.3 billion worth of cocaine.