In the World’s Tuna Capital, Fishermen Are Being Drawn Into a Deadly Drug War

MANTA, Ecuador—In a city that calls itself the world capital of tuna, generations have made their living from the Pacific’s rich waters. 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.

Fishermen unload their catch in Manta, where income from fishing is often just a few hundred dollars a month.The shift places fishermen in the crosshairs of a deadly drug war unfolding at sea, even as some maintain they have nothing to do with the cocaine trade.

Since Aug. 28, U.S. forces have blown up at least eight Ecuadorean fishing vessels originating in Manta, a port city of around 300,000 people. The U.S. military says the targets were being used as floating refueling stations for smaller drug boats hauling cocaine north.

The strikes are targeting a maritime cocaine supply chain that has become deeply entrenched in Manta. One fisherman in Manta said he was paid $30,000 to transport about two tons of cocaine in 2023. 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.

The latest strikes came after the U.S. Treasury Department in August sanctioned what it called a “narcoterrorist network” of local fishing companies, business owners and boats that allegedly help move thousands of pounds of cocaine a month between Manta and Mexico, where cartels then move the drugs into the U.S.

In the recent strikes, U.S. Southern Command, which oversees American forces in Latin America, said the crews were removed from the vessels and handed over to Ecuador’s authorities before the boats were sunk.

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 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.”

Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa backs the U.S. operations and has become a member of the Trump administration’s Shield of the Americas security alliance, which includes other right-wing governments in Latin America.

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.

Relatives recently gathered on Manta’s waterfront with signs that read, “Justice for our fishermen.” This week, a Manta judge ordered the release of 28 detained fishermen who had been picked up from two boats sunk by the U.S., after ruling that the operation was unauthorized and that the strike destroyed the crime scene.

In January, a vessel from Manta went missing after the crew alerted family members that drones and aircraft were following them, family members said.

Two months later, two fishing boat crews said drones attacked them without warning near the Galápagos Islands, forcing them to abandon ship.

Hernán Flores, captain of one of the boats, said his crew was then picked up by English-speaking men with guns. The crew members were then handed over to Salvadoran authorities, before being allowed to return to Manta.

The crew members have denied any wrongdoing. “We were afraid they were going to kill us,” said Flores. “We are fishermen. We set out to catch fish, never imagining that this would happen.”

The U.S. military denied any involvement in the drone strikes in March and the disappearance of the vessel in January. In a statement, a spokesman said operations are conducted in compliance with U.S. and international law.

In a visit this month to Ecuador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. wasn’t targeting fishermen but pursuing drug traffickers who have rapidly transformed Ecuador into one of Latin America’s most violent countries.

“Nobody is looking to kill fishermen here, but the greatest risk is that these groups will continue to operate, because they are killing people,” Rubio told reporters. “We’ll still blow up ships if need be.”

Édison Washington Prado, a boatman from Manta known by some as the Pablo Escobar of Ecuador, helped establish the current cocaine route by deploying fishing vessels in the Pacific to provide fuel to smaller drug boats, said Ecuadorean and U.S. law-enforcement officials. In 2018, he pleaded guilty in the U.S. to drug smuggling.

Today, Ecuador’s two biggest gangs—Los Choneros and Los Lobos—are fighting for control of Manta and its strategic maritime route, national police say. The U.S. has designated both gangs, which are known to work closely with Mexican cartels, as terrorist organizations.

Traffickers move around Manta in bulletproof trucks. A prosecutor was gunned down in June. The mayor was assassinated in 2023. Last year, Manta had a homicide rate of about 137 per 100,000 people compared with a rate of 5.4 a decade ago, making it one of the world’s most murderous cities.

Many residents see the drug trade as their best shot out of poverty because of the lack of well-paying lawful jobs, said Bryan Mendoza, a sociologist at the Eloy Alfaro Lay University of Manabí in Manta.

“It’s no longer seen as an isolated activity, but as a possible means for individual and family development,” he said. “So making a living that way can seem normal.”

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.

After being released last year, he took to the sea again, lured by the promise of more money.

On July 17, a few days after Garay left Manta, Véliz saw pictures online of her son handcuffed and surrounded by members of El Salvador’s navy. Nearly 1,000 miles off the coast of El Salvador, Garay and another man had been caught on their small, open-hull boat with more than a ton of cocaine. Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, called the $34 million drug seizure a blow against transnational crime.

“I felt terrible and cried,” said Véliz. “As a mother, I thought, what have you done?”

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. He says there are hundreds of Ecuadorean fishermen imprisoned in the U.S. and Central America. In Manta, their families are left in a desperate position.

“If they were already poor, now they are living in absolute destitution,” said Carrión.

Write to Ryan Dubé at ryan.dube@wsj.com