ABOVE THE CARIBBEAN SEA — As soon as the aging P-3 surveillance plane rumbles off the island runway, a crew of three agents for U.S. Customs and Border Protection begins hunting with high-tech radar for anything that looks out of the ordinary in the vast Caribbean Sea.

It could be a fishing boat with no obvious fishing gear. A speed boat in the middle of open water and loaded with more gas cans than passengers. A sail boat that doesn’t quite sit right on the surface.

“To us, every dot out there is a possible bad guy,” said J.D., a senior agent, describing the faint white dots on his radar screen during a surveillance flight over the Caribbean Sea and South America last month.

J.D. spoke to The Associated Press on the condition that he be identified only by his initials, because of safety concerns surrounding his work to find and intercept cocaine. He and his colleagues increasingly are finding cocaine smuggled across the Caribbean bound for the United States or points farther east.

While the eastern Pacific Ocean remains the most popular route for cocaine smuggling, the Caribbean is again becoming a popular option decades after U.S. authorities all but shut down cocaine smuggling into South Florida.