Pot bust nets 137 bales

This corrects an earlier version.

Authorities compared their ocean pursuit of drug runners over the weekend to a game of cat and mouse.

Maybe, that is, if the mouse has to leave 5 tons of cheese behind to get away.

In one of the biggest marijuana seizures in recent Coast Guard memory, authorities based out of Newport Beach announced Wednesday that they pulled nearly 10,000 pounds of marijuana out of the water over the weekend, the remnants of a three-plus hour chase with drug runners from Mexico trying to bring the narcotics into the United States.

“This is a massive, massive bust,” said Lt. Kristopher Ensley, one of the commanding officers who was aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Narwhal during the chase.

To put it in perspective, the entire U.S. Coast Guard seized 22,000 pounds of marijuana in all of fiscal year 2007-08.

At the end of a half-day of searching Sunday night and Monday morning, authorities had netted 9,987 pounds of marijuana in 137 bales, worth an estimated $32 million.

Sunday afternoon, Ensley and his crew were patrolling about 105 miles south of San Diego and 40 miles off the Mexican coast when they spotted a 30- to 40-foot open-hulled speed boat.

As they steered closer for a routine check as the sun set, the boat began speeding up, Ensley recalled. Through the darkness, using radar and night-vision goggles, the Coast Guard continued to close in, he said. When the speed boat’s crew spotted Ensley’s boat, about a half a mile away, they tried to high-tail it out of there.

“It threw off the bales to increase its speed,” Ensley said. The Coast Guard gave chase for three hours, watching the boat drop bale after bale in a 4-mile stretch as it neared the Mexican border.

Eventually, the drug runners’ boat exited international waters into Mexican waters, and Ensley and his crew had to turn back to recover the abandoned product.

“We thought maybe 50 bales had been thrown overboard,” Ensley said. “We’d pick up five here, then turn around and pick up five more. Every time we turned around we’d see more in the water.”

From 8 p.m. Sunday to 2 a.m. Monday Ensley’s crew searched, in total hauling in 136 bales of marijuana, each weighing between 70 and 80 pounds, he said.

A search helicopter found one more the next morning, he said.

“My crew and I were very excited. The crew was the reason we were so successful. They stand extremely vigilant watch,” Ensley said. “We’re constantly watching the radar, we’re constantly looking for boats, making sure they’re not doing anything illegal.”

The Narwhal crew members normally patrol the waters from San Mateo to northern Los Angeles, but three or four times a year they’re sent toward Mexico, he said. The crew looks for drug runners, illegal immigrants and anything in between, he said.

Ensley’s crew also seized 336 pounds of pot in September.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.