There's a new reason to be scared of the ocean: sharks on drugs

Recently, someone tipped off the DEA about a shipment of narcotic that was on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. However, nobody expected that it would end with sharks consuming the drugs. Click on to read the strange story!

So you might be wondering, just how do sharks end up high on cocaine? Well as reported by Science, when traffickers are transporting bales of cocaine on boats if they think they will be caught they simply chuck the bundles of drugs into the water and sharks end up eating them.

The marine biologist Tom Hird has analyzed this dangerous consequence in the television special 'Shark Week', on Discovery Channel, where he denounced the large amount of narcotics that has been reaching the marine habitat of countries such as the United States and Brazil in recent years.

Photo: Unsplash - Gerald Schombs

In the case of Florida, we are talking about a strategic area due to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, which has turned it into a hot spot for the constant trafficking of illegal substances.

When the coast guard locates some of these deliveries, drug traffickers have no problem throwing the narcotics into the sea, causing dangerous animals such as sharks to end up consuming them.

In 'Shark Week', among other consequences, they have been able to see first-hand the effects that drug consumption has on sharks. And it is definitely something to worry about.

From species like the hammerhead shark that goes from avoiding humans to approaching them erratically, to others like the dangerous tiger shark which ends up pursuing imaginary prey.

Photo: Unsplash - Gerald Schombs

What's more, some scientists have tested the sharks Pavlov style, throwing bales of fake narcotics and the real stuff into the water at the same time and, to no one's surprise, the sharks went after the narcotics. A sign that the sharks are hooked on the cocaine.

Brazil's Oswaldo Cruz Institute has also detected the presence of substances in more than a dozen sharks  in Brazilian waters and it has been due to direct contamination of the water.

However, in Brazil they estimate that there are three ways in which these substances reach the sharks and the waters of, above all, the Atlantic Ocean.

The waste dumped by consumers, the bales thrown by drug traffickers and waste dumped by illegal laboratories through the sewage system that ends up reaching the sea.

Photo: Unsplash - Jakob Owens

The Nebraska Water Center confirms that sharks do not metabolize these substances as quickly, which can modify their behaviors, make them more aggressive and affect their endocrine and hormonal systems.

And why only sharks? Basically because, in addition to consuming it through their gills, it also reaches their bodies through other contaminated prey that they eat daily, hence they are the marine animals with the highest levels of substances. Narcotics no longer only affect ordinary citizens.