Sharks test positive for cocaine, caffeine in Bahamas

Brazilian scientists have reportedly discovered traces of nose candy, caffeine and painkillers in sharks swimming in waters around the Bahamas.

New York Post reports on Thursday that these “blow-fish” aren’t getting hooked on purpose; it’s the fallout from an uptick in marine pollutants, according to a jaw-calyptic study published in the journal Environmental Pollution.

The researchers reportedly described the troubling shark-otics trend writing, “Pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are increasingly recognized as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in marine environments, particularly in areas undergoing rapid urbanization and tourism-driven development.”

To see whether these marine marauders were under the influence, the team was said to have analysed blood samples from 85 specimens around Eleuthera, one of the Bahamas’ most remote islands.

The subjects were drug-tested for both legal and illegal substances.

Of the samples, 28 sharks spanning three species reportedly tested positive for drugs, the most common of which was caffeine.

This was followed by acetaminophen and diclofenac, the active ingredients in the popular painkillers Tylenol and Voltaren.

Two of the animals tested positive for cocaine, which researchers were said to have attributed to them chomping on drug packets that fell into the water.

ADVERTISEMENT

“It’s mostly because people are going there, peeing in the water and dumping their sewage in the water. They bite things to investigate and end up exposed,” a study author, Natascha Wosnick of the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil, was quoted by Science News.

Researchers reportedly noted that the drug-addled predators had been taken from popular tourist and dive spots, suggesting that they’d been exposed to wastewater from boats and urban developments, which may have been polluted with the aforementioned substances.

While it is yet unclear what effect the drugs are having on the predators’ behavior, the researchers found changes in metabolic markers in sharks with contaminated blood.

According to Tracy Fanara, a Florida oceanographer who was not involved with the study, this indicated that exposure to this chemical runoff was causing them to experience stress and burn more energy while attempting to metabolise the pollutants.

According to NYP, this reportedly marked the first time cocaine had been detected in sharks in the Bahamas, as trace amounts had previously been found in sharks in Brazil, and the first instance of the critters testing positive for caffeine anywhere on Earth.