Summary: Scientists believe that sharks off the Florida coast might be consuming drugs dumped into the sea. Do cocaine sharks really exist, and how this phenomenon might be impacting their behavior?
Shark Week Explores Theory of ‘Cocaine Sharks’ Off Florida Coast
In an intriguing development, scientists believe that sharks off the Florida coast might be consuming drugs dumped into the sea. This theory will be explored in an upcoming episode of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, titled “Cocaine Sharks” The title is a nod to the infamous “Cocaine Bear” that ingested nearly 75 lb of cocaine in 1985.
Dr. Tracy Fanara, a Florida-based environmental engineer and lead member of the research team, stated that the catchy title aims to highlight a real problem: everything we use, manufacture, and consume ends up in our wastewater streams and natural water bodies, exposing aquatic life to these substances. Previous studies have shown that pharmaceuticals, including cocaine, methamphetamines, and ketamine, have affected fish.
The US Coast Guard recently recovered more than $186m of illegal narcotics seized in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. If these cocaine bales are a source of pollution, it’s plausible that sharks can be affected by this chemical. In the upcoming Shark Week episode, Fanara and British marine biologist Tom Hird conduct experiments to determine whether the sharks in waters around Florida were consuming the dumped narcotics and whether this affected them.
The scientists observed unusual behavior by some of the sharks, including a hammerhead swimming directly towards them while moving erratically, and a sandbar shark swimming in circles as it appeared to focus on an imaginary object. The scientists created packages that resembled cocaine bales and dropped them into the water to see how the sharks would respond. The sharks swam straight to the bales and took bites out of them.
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