Sharks in Brazil Test Positive for a Surprising Contaminant: Cocaine
Researchers found cocaine in sharpnose sharks off Brazil. These sharks are in the same genus as the Atlantic sharpnose shark, shown here with a student researcher near Cape Lookout in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
The drug had never previously been found in wild sharks. But that doesn’t mean these fish are unique; scientists just hadn’t previously tested any shark for coke. The effort was a slam dunk, with the 13 sharks that were examined all testing positive for the drug in their muscles and liver, according to a new study in Science of the Total Environment.
What this means for the sharks is an open question, say the study co-authors Enrico Mendes Saggioro and Rachel Ann Hauser-Davis, an ecotoxicologist and a biologist, respectively, at Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. No one has ever studied the behavioral or physiological impacts of cocaine in sharks, Hauser-Davis says, but her ongoing research on environmental contamination in these apex predators suggests the notorious drug is only one of the animals’ worries.
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