A Bermudian was arrested on the Dutch half of St. Maarten island with five other men after officials seized 10,340 pounds of cannabis on Tuesday.

Dutch Coast Guard, Customs, and Police reacted to a distress call from a fishing boat that ran out of fuel near Saba Bank off the coast of St. Maarten, a spokesman said.

Authorities say two Venezuelans, two citizens of the Netherlands Antilles, one Bermudian and a Kittitian have been arrested.

"Up to now we have taken 142 bales off the ship," Coast Guard spokesman Robin Middel said, an operation that took two hours.

The Dutch navy frigate, the Abraham van der Hulst, responded Monday to distress signals from a fishing vessel 40 miles off St. Maarten around 8.30 a.m. The fishing boat, called the Carl Senior, had run out of fuel and sprung a leak. It had been travelling to St. Maarten from Curacao, prosecutor Cor Merx said.

Two crew members from the Carl Senior had left in a dinghy, saying they were going to seek help from Guadeloupe. "When coast guard officials boarded, they were literally tripping over bales with drugs," Merx said.

They were taken to a police station in Philipsburg, but had not yet been charged with any crime.

Last month, the government of the Netherlands Antilles pledged to establish zero tolerance for drug trafficking, responding to the sharp increase in cocaine and marijuana seizures at airports and along the hard-to-patrol coasts in recent years.

The Netherlands Antilles has been investigating the Carl Senior since September and that "ten months of hard work had paid off", according to Head of the Coast Guard, Jan C. Drost. He also said it was the largest haul for this year.