Raymond Kuemper and Danny Menard’s luck ran out near Cattle Point.

There was nothing in particular to indicate that the 30-foot Bayliner the men were traveling in near San Juan Island was carrying 132 pounds of high-grade marijuana from British Columbia.

But when U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped the boat last week for a random check and went onboard, they found empty hockey bags smelling strongly of pot. The boat was escorted to Anacortes, where a search turned up bags of “B.C. bud” stashed in compartments throughout the boat.

“This was a cold hit,” said Mike Milne, public affairs officer for CBP’s Seattle office. “It’s an area we routinely patrol because it’s a corridor for people coming down from British Columbia to Anacortes and other places.”

The incident illustrates the ongoing challenge law enforcement agencies face in addressing the volume of drugs smuggled by boat into U.S. waters. The issue has been a persistent one in the decade or so since potent, hydroponically grown marijuana from British Columbia became a highly lucrative export cash crop worth an estimated $6 billion annually.

Much of that crop is controlled by gangs and smuggled through the United States’ porous border by land, air and water. On any given day, agents are faced with the daunting task of surveying the dozens of boats traveling through Puget Sound and trying to determine which might warrant a closer look.

“There’s so much boating traffic in this area that it’s very easy for them to blend in with the regular citizens who are just out boating and having a good time,” said James Warfield, Customs and Border Protection’s director of marine operations for the Puget Sound region.

Smugglers have become increasingly sophisticated, Warfield said, using virtually all types of watercraft and a broad range of people to move drugs across the invisible marine boundary.

“You can go out on any busy day and just about everything you see on the water is something (smugglers) will use,” he said. “They’re using kayaks, Jet-Skis, express cruisers, open fishing boats, tugboats, rubber inflatables, sailboats. Just about anything that floats can be used.”

Unlike land crossings, where roads funnel people, goods and cars to checkpoints that are monitored around the clock, the marine boarder is wide open and can be crossed at any point at any time.

The 132 pounds of high-grade "B.C. bud" found on a Bayliner last week could net close to $800,000 in street value, authorities said.

Recreational boats crossing the border into the San Juan Islands are required to stop at one of five ports of entry in the area, but typically check in by phone unless agents are present. Boats may be asked to remain at the dock until an agent arrives for an inspection and boats on the water are routinely stopped for checks.

Agents look for clues that something might be amiss, Warfield said, such as a boat and occupants that appear mismatched—a rundown boat carrying well-dressed occupants, for example, or an expensive boat with a crew that looks out of place. Indications that a boat crossed the border might prompt a check, but Warfield acknowledged that it’s a difficult call.

“It’s tough,” he said. “You try not to harass the law-abiding people, but in the same instance, you don’t know who’s law-abiding just by looking at them.”

In the most recent case, the boat was traveling near Cattle Point, an area known as a smuggling route. Kuemper, 45, and Menard, 42, Canadian citizens from Langley, B.C., were arrested and face charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

The 132 pounds of marijuana on the boat was considered an average-sized seizure, though a potentially profitable one. Potent B.C. bud sells for $3,000 a pound at wholesale and about $6,000 at street value, Milne said, meaning the shipment seized last week could have netted close to $800,000 if it had made it to the streets of Los Angeles.

“It’s a very lucrative business,” he said.

Since 2003, authorities have arrested 104 people and seized more than 8,800 pounds of pot, 222 kilos of cocaine and $1.2 million from boats traveling through the Puget Sound region. The area’s largest drug seizure to date was in 1986, when the Honduran ship Eagle One was stopped near Neah Bay and found to be carrying 507 pounds of cocaine. In recent years, smaller but notable cases have been documented, such as the infamous “burning boat” incident in 2003.

In that situation, a boat operator traveling in the San Juan Islands refused to stop for an inspection, instead lighting his boat on fire and jumping into the water. Authorities put out the fire, seized more than 430 pounds of marijuana from the boat, hauled the man out of the water and promptly arrested him.

Marine smuggling in the Northwest dates back far beyond the emergence of B.C. bud, when Puget Sound was used as a corridor for rum smuggling during Prohibition. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency was established in 2003 under the Department of Homeland Security to bring together border protection efforts housed in various federal agencies, with the primary mission of safeguarding the nation’s borders against terrorists.

A CBP Office of Air and Marine location was opened in Bellingham in 2004 to patrol international air and marine borders. Its agents work with other entities, including the U.S. Coast Guard, Canadian police departments and the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office, to share information and bolster enforcement. Earlier this year, a Port Angeles office was opened to focus strictly on protecting the region’s marine border.

The new office is critically needed, Warfield said. The year the Bellingham office opened, agents seized 4,900 pounds of marijuana and 25 kilos of cocaine from various types of watercraft. The crackdown led to a decline in marine smuggling, but smugglers soon swapped boats for aircraft and aviation smuggling dramatically increased. Authorities responded accordingly, with arrests and seizures of drugs transported on aircraft, and Warfield said marine smuggling is now on the rise again.

“In the last year, we’ve started to see a slow but steady increase in the amount of marine smuggling going on,” he said.

The majority of contraband being shipped across the U.S. border into Puget Sound recently is marijuana, but Milne said recent seizures of ecstasy manufactured in Canada at border crossings on land raise concerns about the drug also being smuggled by boat in the near future.

“I would say that the marine environment is a continual threat in terms of smuggling,” he said. “It’s a multi-billion dollar business.”