iStockphoto
Move over Cocaine Bear and Cocaine Hippos, there’s a new coked up creature in the animal kingdom: sharks.
Discovery’s “Shark Week” is just the latest to delve into the issues confronting sharks who are doing too much blow in the episode “Cocaine Sharks” which airs at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Wednesday, July 26.
During the episode, Tom “The Blowfish” Hird and University of Florida environmental scientist Tracy Fanara take a closer look at how all that cocaine that’s washed up on the beaches of Florida over the decades has affected the shark population.
“The deeper story here is the way that chemicals, pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are entering our waterways — entering our oceans — and what effect that they then could go on to have on these delicate ocean ecosystems,” Hird told Live Science.
Hird and Fanara set their sights on the Florida Keys, where fishers tell stories of sharks consuming drugs that have been funneled into the region on ocean currents. In the show, they dive with sharks to look for any unusual behaviors and begin to see sharks acting in unexpected ways. One great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) — a species that’s normally wary of people — comes straight at the team and appears to be swimming with a wonk. At a shipwreck 60 feet (18 meters) beneath the surface, Hird encounters a sandbar shark (Carcharhinus plumbeus) that appears to be fixated on something and swims in tight circles, despite there being nothing in sight.
The researchers rigged up some fake bales of cocaine to test how the sharks react.
Surprisingly, not only did the sharks take bites out of the bales of fake cocaine, one of them dragged the bale off with him.
Taking the test even further, Hird and Fanara simulated dropping bales of cocaine from an airplane into the water.
Once again, multiple species of shark swooped in for a taste.
Despite those reactions, Hird says it doesn’t necessarily prove the sharks are consuming the coke.
To prove that, he says, they will have to test tissue and blood samples to be certain that there is cocaine in these sharks’ systems.
And it’s not just in Florida where there is potential for Cocaine Sharks.
This past February, New Zealand law enforcement authorities found over 3.5 tons of cocaine floating in the Pacific Ocean.
Then in April, Italian police found two tons of cocaine floating in the waters off Sicily.