DRUGS was the first thought that passed through Andy Le Prevost’s mind when he found a sealed plastic package in his catch.

Mr Le Prevost, 46, landed the plastic container, which was in two plastic bags that had been heat-sealed, out of the sea about half-a-mile south of Guernsey.

He contacted Customs on his way back into port.

‘They were excited about it when they first saw it,’ he said.

Despite speculation that the package contained an illegal substance, a Customs official confirmed yesterday that tests had shown that was not the case.

‘It turned out to be nothing of interest,’ the spokesman said.

‘It was not any kind of controlled substance, but we are really grateful to anyone who gets in touch with us when they find something suspicious.’

Mr Le Prevost said: ‘We weren’t going to bring it back into the harbour without telling someone.

‘How would we have explained that if we had been searched and it was drugs?’

The fisherman said the package had not been secured to the seabed and could have come from anywhere.

‘It could have been a ship’s cargo or something thrown in off the coast of France,’ he said. ‘With the tides we have you never know where it could have come from.

‘But I have never come across anything like this before. This was the first suspicious thing we had ever found.’

Leaving drugs attached to the seabed is a common tactic for smugglers, who come back and pick them up at a later date.

Many drug convictions in the Guernsey courts come from Customs catching importers as they land on the island’s shores.

‘From what Customs told me, they thought it was something pharmaceutical,’ Mr Le Prevost added.

‘I know there were a lot of rumours going around that it was heroin, but that’s Guernsey for you.’