Now, some fishermen are being drawn into a far more lucrative trade: cocaine trafficking, with a single drug run paying $20,000 to $40,000, compared with the roughly $300 a month they can make from fishing. MANTA, Ecuador—In a city that calls itself the world capital of tuna, generations have made their living from the Pacific’s rich waters.
One fisherman in Manta said he was paid $30,000 to transport about two tons of cocaine in 2023. Because of the lack of well-paying lawful jobs, said Bryan Mendoza, a sociologist at the Eloy Alfaro Lay University of Manabí in Manta, many residents see the drug trade as their best shot out of poverty. The strikes are targeting a maritime cocaine supply chain that has become deeply entrenched in Manta. After handing off the drugs to another boat near the coast of Mexico, he returned to Ecuador and used the money to build a brick house to replace his family’s cane dwelling.
In a September report, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights, Ben Saul, called the strikes in the Pacific and Caribbean unlawful, extrajudicial killings that could “plausibly constitute crimes against humanity. Family members of some Manta fishermen insist they weren’t shipping drugs. Others say they might be involved in the drug trade, but are merely pawns of bigger, more nefarious forces.
Since September 2025, the U.S. military said it has killed about 230 crew members in Caribbean and Pacific waters on boats allegedly carrying drugs.
In January, a vessel from Manta went missing after the crew alerted family members that drones and aircraft were following them, family members said.
In 2017, Jhony Garay, another Manta fisherman, was arrested and jailed in the U.S. after he was caught shipping cocaine on his boat. He had embarked on that trip to get funds to rebuild his family’s home after an earthquake in 2016, said his mother, Elena Véliz. “So making a living that way can seem normal. Carlos Carrión, who lives in a fishing village on the outskirts of Manta, runs a group for family members of fishermen jailed abroad for drug smuggling. In Manta, their families are left in a desperate position.
“It’s no longer seen as an isolated activity, but as a possible means for individual and family development,” he said. He says there are hundreds of Ecuadorean fishermen imprisoned in the U.S. and Central America.
