Cocaine sharks may be eating drugs left in the sea, scientists say
Sharks could be feasting on bales of hallucinatory drugs dumped off the Florida coast, according to research by scientists in the US.
In a programme entitled Cocaine Sharks, a highlight of Discovery’s Shark Week which is due to air tonight (July 26) at 10pm ET, marine scientists examine if sharks are consuming floating pharmaceuticals cast overboard by passing traffickers.
“It’s a catchy headline to shed light on a real problem, that everything we use, everything we manufacture, everything we put into our bodies, ends up in our wastewater streams and natural water bodies, and these aquatic life we depend on to survive are then exposed to that,” Dr Tracy Fanara, a Florida-based environmental engineer and lead member of the research team told CBS News.
She added: “We’ve seen studies with pharmaceuticals, cocaine, methamphetamines, ketamine, all of these, where fish are being [affected] by drugs. If these cocaine bales are a point source of pollution, it’s very plausible [sharks] can be affected by this chemical.
“Cocaine is so soluble that any of those packages open just a little, the structural integrity is destroyed and the drug is in the water.”
In their research, conducted across six days at sea in the Florida Keys, Fanara and the British marine biologist Tom Hird observed sharks exhibiting peculiar behaviours.
Footage from the show, which you can view above, showed that sharks did swim towards bales of fake cocaine, and Hird observed at least one hammerhead swimming differently than normal. “Now that is unusual. It could be a past injury or it could be a chemical imbalance,” he says in the footage.
They also observed a sandbar shark swimming in circles as it apparently focused on an imaginary object.
“[Hird] did notice some strange behaviour, but there’s no telling whether the shark behaviour changes were associated with exposure to cocaine or if it was just a coincidence. Definitely, more research must be done,” Fanara added.
Florida serves as a staging point for large quantities of drugs making their way into the US from South America, and plastic-wrapped bundles of cocaine are often lost at sea or tossed overboard by traffickers being pursued by law enforcement, according to The Guardian.
Last month, the US Coast Guard announced it had recovered more than $186m of illegal narcotics from the waters of the Caribbean and southern Florida.
In the coming months, Fanara plans to partner with other Florida marine scientists to take blood samples from some of the sharks to evaluate cocaine levels.
Their research is not dissimilar to the story of the movie Cocaine Bear, which was inspired by the true story of an American black bear that ingested a duffel bag of cocaine in 1985.
Reviewing the film, NME’s Alex Flood awarded Cocaine Bear three stars and described it as “fucked-up and furry in the year’s wildest movie.”
The review added: “There’s already talk of a sequel, Cocaine Shark, and the cast have joked about getting jobs in the Cocaine Bear Cinematic Universe. So maybe it doesn’t really matter if Cocaine Bear is average, as long as it has both cocaine and bears in it. And we can most definitely confirm that it does.”
Meanwhile, B-movie production company Wide Eye Releasing recently confirmed the release of the movie Cocaine Shark.
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Damian Jones
NME
