Don’t ‘treasure hunt’ for marijuana that washed up on beach, say Florida police

A Florida beach was recently overtaken by a different type of weed than that of the sea: a “large amount of marijuana” washed up on Neptune Beach over the weekend.

The Neptune Beach police department wrote in a Facebook post that they had “responded to a large amount of marijuana which washed ashore along the shoreline” on Saturday.

“It appears a large quantity likely broke open at sea and separated before coming ashore. Officers are on scene working with Public Works to clean the marijuana off the beach,” the department explained.

An image supplied by the Neptune Beach police department. Photograph: Mike Key/Neptune Beach Police Department

They advised against anyone “coming out and turning this discovery into your own treasure hunt” because the marijuana had been “floating in the ocean for some time” and “begun to degrade and rot”.

“Please avoid the area until cleanup is completed,” the department implored.

Despite the warnings, commenters on the post offered some jokes, with one person writing: “Is this still available?”

One beachgoer told a local news station that he and his mother initially thought the marijuana was sargassum, but decided to do some further investigating.

“I did pick it up and smelled it to see what it smelled like,” the visitor said. “It was weed. It’s kind of crazy.”

He and his mother later called the police.

Another beachgoer, Bryan Crews, claimed that the site looked like a TV show and estimated how much marijuana was actually there.

“I don’t know from personal experience, but watching shows, if you put it all together, it probably would’ve been five or 10lb,” Crews said.