2023-08-03 05:33:32
The sea off Florida is considered the most drug-polluted body of water in the world. Why this is and whether it gets the sharks high is now being investigated.
Are the sharks high off Florida? Or better yet, how much cocaine do sea predators swallow over the course of their lives and what impact does that have on them? The American marine biologist Tom Hird wants to answer these questions. He has teamed up with the environmental scientist Tracy Fanara from the University of Florida, as Spektrum.de now reports with reference to the Discovery Channel TV program “Cocaine Sharks”.
Why would Florida sharks get high anyway?
In fact, the regions around the Florida Keys, where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Atlantic, are considered the most drug-contaminated waters in the world. Because this is where the most important routes for drug dealers run, who mainly smuggle cocaine from the producing countries in South America via the waterway to the USA.
Often enough, so Spektrum.de writes, a bundle of cocaine falls off board a ship here and there when the coast guard unexpectedly turns up. The chance that sharks and other sea creatures are exposed to these floating packages of drugs is high. “This is the only place in the world where a shark can come into contact with such large doses of cocaine,” says Hird in the TV report.
Hird and Fanara’s fieldwork focuses on the waters around the Florida Keys. There, drug smugglers drop their goods from light aircraft so middlemen can fish them out of the water. Because of ocean currents, some of these drugs often wash up near the Keys, the report says. The warm coastal waters are in turn a favorite spot for many of the sea predators, including tiger, hammerhead and bull sharks.
Shark swims in tight circles
During their dives, the researchers said they observed a great hammerhead shark that leaned unnaturally to the side while swimming and looked wobbly. Another time, Hird and Fanara saw a sandbank shark swimming in small circles, almost like a little mad, as if fixed on an invisible object.
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These strange behaviors would have nothing to do with the usual behavior patterns of predatory fish. It is still unclear whether they are actually due to drug exposure. To do this, the animals would have to be caught and blood taken from them, the scientists say.
There is no question that cocaine is repeatedly found off the coast, most recently off Key West a few days ago, where a man fished a 1.2-kilogram package containing the white powder, worth around 37,000 euros, out of the water.
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