This puts the “white” in the “Great White.”
Move over “Cocaine Bear.” Brazilian scientists have found traces of nose candy, caffeine and painkillers in sharks swimming in the waters around the Bahamas.
These “whacked fish” are not caught on purpose, however – this is the result of rising ocean pollution in a jaw-dropping study published in the journal Environmental Pollution.
“Pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs are increasingly recognized as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in marine environments, especially in areas of rapid urbanization and tourism-driven development,” the researchers wrote while describing the worrying trend of shark-otics.
To see if these pirates were under the influence, the team reportedly analyzed blood samples from 85 relatives around Eleuthera, one of the most remote islands of the Bahamas. Subjects were drug tested for both legal and illegal substances.
In the samples, 28 sharks of three species were tested and found to be in possession of drugs, the most common of which was caffeine. This was followed by acetaminophen and diclofenac, the active ingredients in the popular pain relievers Tylenol and Voltaren.
Meanwhile, two animals tested positive for cocaine, which researchers say were the ones that chewed the packets of drugs that fell into the water.
“They gnaw at things they should investigate and end up exposed,” study author Natascha Wosnick of the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil, told Science News.
This was reported to be the first time cocaine has been found in sharks in the Bahamas – the same amount found in sharks in Brazil – and the first case of surfers being found to have caffeine anywhere in the world.
The researchers noted that these drug-eating animals were taken from popular tourist spots and dive sites, suggesting that they had been exposed to sewage from boats and urban areas, which may have been contaminated by the above-mentioned substances.
It is not yet clear what effect the drugs have on the behavior of the predators, but the researchers found changes in metabolic markers in sharks with contaminated blood.
This showed that exposure to these chemical effluents caused them to become stressed and burn more energy while trying to cut through the pollution, according to Tracy Fanara, a Florida marine biologist who was not involved in the study.
The researcher previously helped produce “Cocaine Sharks,” a documentary about how sharks could be exposed to cocaine from distribution networks operating in the Caribbean.
Coincidentally, research on goldfish has found that caffeine increases their energy and focus like humans, according to Wosnick, although it is not yet clear how this will affect the behavior of their goldfish counterparts in the wild.
However, scientists found their use of drugs to be dangerous, given the remoteness of the area, which suggests that even clean marine areas are not safe from pollution.
“We’re talking about a remote island in the Bahamas,” Wosnick cried.
Fanara said that ultimately this drug drop serves as a “reminder that coastal infrastructure, tourism and seafood are tightly linked.”
