Drones carrying explosives and a mysterious blue merchant ship: The terror stalking Ecuadorian fishermen

The 20 crew members of the Don Maca were sailing near the Galapagos Islands, in Ecuadorian waters, when they spotted a gray drone flying low, with a small tube pointed at them. They waved, assuming they were being filmed. They never imagined that the small device was carrying explosives.

The Don Maca, a longline fishing boat, had cast its line strewn with hooks. Every morning, its crew divided into six boats and set out to collect the catch. That afternoon, the rain delayed their return, and the last boat came back around 4:00 p.m.

Nearby, two miles away, a blue container ship crested the horizon. While Cheo, the cook, chopped fish for ceviche and a vallenato song played, the betting began.

“He’s a tuna fisherman,” one of them said.

“No, it’s a merchant ship,” another replied.

“I told them: that’s a scientific vessel,” recalls Alexis Rivera, captain of the Don Maca, still convinced he won the argument.

The fishermen were born by the sea and started out in the trade as children. It was the only thing to do in San Mateo, a rural parish of 4,000 inhabitants in Manta, one of Ecuador’s main fishing ports. They had seen all kinds of vessels, but this time none of them could identify the ship. The guessing game stopped when, on that afternoon of March 26, the first explosion hit the center of their boat.

The impact shook the deck and set off the siren. Those who could run crowded onto the bow, waving their arms at a plane circling overhead. Cheo was knocked unconscious near the galley. “My body was thrown about. When I woke up, I was coughing up blood,” he says.

“We went deaf,” several survivors added. At first, they thought the gas cylinders had exploded, but then a second explosion hit. “I was in the hold, storing fish. In the first explosion, my body hit the ceiling and fell to the floor,” recounts Sebastián, another crew member.

They fled in the boats toward the blue ship, the same one they had spoken about minutes before. On board, men dressed as soldiers asked them in English how many of them there were and if there were any wounded. They said one. They were allowed to board, but as soon as they stepped onto the deck, guns were pointed at their heads and they were handcuffed and hooded.

“They took us to the bow. We heard: ‘Boom! Boom!’ I managed to lift my hood and saw them blowing up the ship,” Sebastián recounts. “They grabbed some beers, opened them in front of us, and said: ‘They’re ice cold.’”

They didn’t move from the bow until the early morning of March 27, when they were handed over to a Salvadoran maritime patrol boat. “Why were we handed over to foreigners if we were near the Ecuadorian coast guard?” they ask.

Eight days later they arrived at a military checkpoint in San Salvador, where they were able to bathe for the first time. “We endured sun and rain, some of us shirtless, just as we had come out of the explosion,” Rivera says. The next day they were deported.

“If we had been involved in something illegal, we would be in jail,” Palacios states. “Now they say we were shipwrecked, but they blew up our boat. We went to ask for help believing it was a merchant vessel,” Rivera adds.

Since then, no one has returned to the sea: they don’t have permits and, above all, they are afraid. “We are here by God’s grace,” says Sebastián. It is the first time that fishing has frightened them.

Shadow of the US on the high seas

The story of these fishermen remains shrouded in mystery, but there is a context: a sequence of political and military decisions that keep fishermen in the Pacific and the Caribbean living in fear.

Since September of last year, the United States has carried out at least 54 attacks against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, with 185 dead and three survivors, according to a New York Times monitoring report reconstructed from posts by Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Southern Command.

In January, the government of Daniel Noboa announced a new phase in its fight against organized crime, without specifying what it would entail. The announcement came after the most violent year on record in Ecuador: 9,200 homicides and a rising trend.

In November 2025, Noboa promoted a referendum to allow foreign military bases, and the response was a resounding no. But the Ecuadorian president, aligned with Trump’s hardline approach, has opened the door to a greater U.S. presence. In December, U.S. Air Force personnel arrived in Manta for a joint operation with Ecuadorian military personnel, according to the U.S. embassy.

The Don Maca is not an isolated case. On March 17, the Negra Francisca Duarte II, with 16 crew members, was similarly bombed. It had been fishing near the Galapagos Islands for almost a week and, hours earlier, had passed through an Ecuadorian Coast Guard checkpoint “without incident,” according to its captain, Hernán Flores. In total, there have been three documented attacks in Ecuador, with 38 survivors and eight missing persons.

The first drone launched a device that hit the galley, where the gas cylinders were located. A second one descended to attack the center of the ship, but it lost control and crashed onto the deck. “Its rotors were still moving, but we didn’t want to touch it for fear it would explode,” Flores recalls.

The fire spread quickly, and the extinguisher failed. The crew jumped into the water and reached the lifeboats. Two people suffered burns, including a nephew of the captain, who is still recovering in Manta. Leonel, 22, felt the explosion like a sharp blow to his back: it lifted him off the ground and threw him several meters away.

They too sailed toward a blue container ship. The response was identical. “Some men in military uniforms, speaking in English, pointed guns at us, handcuffed us behind our backs, and covered our heads,” Flores recounts. A day later, they were handed over to a Salvadoran patrol, without charges, and deported.

Between the ship’s disappearance from radar and its return to Manta, a week passed, during which families gathered daily in front of the Port Authority to demand information. They received no answers.

Ecuadorian Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo defended the actions of the United States in the newspaper El Universo, asserting that Washington requests authorization from Ecuador when operating in territorial waters. However, authorities are avoiding confirming or denying whether Washington is behind these attacks on fishermen. Instead, they have focused on the possible illicit activities of the attacked vessels, without any investigation underway. There has also been no clear official statement from Washington.

The Guayaquil Human Rights Committee believes that the events could be classified as enforced disappearances committed by foreign forces and has questioned the government’s “secrecy.”

The eight who did not return

The return of the crew members of the Don Maca and the Negra Francisca Duarte II rekindled the hope of eight families. The Fiorella departed on January 2 with 10 crew members; only two returned. Since January 20, the others remain missing.

In María Mero’s house, her son Jefferson’s shoes hang high above the door frame. It’s a ritual to ask for his return. In one corner, an altar: a Christ figure with his hands bound, a rosary, a red flower, two glasses of water, cards with prayers, and a lit candle next to his photograph. Each object has a meaning that can’t be revealed until he reappears, the woman says.

“They were in the boats when they heard an explosion. They were far away and only saw smoke,” says María, in a half-built house. The grandchildren play in a hammock; others rest on Uncle Jeff’s bed. Her husband, who has diabetes and psoriasis, suffers because they can’t always afford his medication. Jefferson was the breadwinner; without him, life is just a matter of daily survival.

“I want my son back,” says 71-year-old María, before bursting into tears. She doesn’t believe the port captain, who told her to stop searching, that they are already dead. She insists: the families have received information that the eight are being held on an American ship. “They still have them. We just want them back.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition