Bahamas 'Cocaine Sharks' Now Testing Positive for Cocaine and Caffeine

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...

First, it was cocaine hippos. Then it was a cocaine bear. Now it's cocaine sharks. Sharks in the Bahamas are testing positive for the devil's dandruff and caffeine, and it's not as though they are being deliberately dosed with snow and coffee; in this case, partying tourists are being blamed.

This puts the “white” in “Great White.”

Move over “Cocaine Bear.” Brazilian scientists have discovered traces of nose candy, caffeine and painkillers in sharks swimming in waters around the Bahamas.

These “blow-fish” aren’t getting hooked on purpose — it’s the fallout from an uptick in marine pollutants, per an a-jaw-calyptic study published in the journal Environmental Pollution.

“Pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are increasingly recognized as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in marine environments, particularly in areas undergoing rapid urbanization and tourism-driven development,” the researchers wrote while describing the troubling shark-otics trend.

This isn't the first time this has happened. We've seen and have reported on other instances of ice-laden wildlife.

Read More: Nature Gets Weird: Now, It's Cocaine Sharks

Pablo Escobar's Cocaine Hippos Do Exist, and Colombia Is Sterilizing Them

Things are, once again, getting weird - and the sharks are getting wired.

To see whether these marine marauders were under the influence, the team had reportedly analyzed blood samples from 85 specimens around Eleuthera, one of the Bahamas’ most remote islands. The subjects were drug-tested for both legal and illegal substances.

Of the samples, a shocking 28 sharks spanning three species tested positive for drugs, the most common of which was caffeine. This was followed by acetaminophen and diclofenac, the active ingredients in the popular painkillers Tylenol and Voltaren.

Meanwhile, two of the animals tested positive for cocaine, which researchers attributed to them chomping on drug packets that fell into the water.

“They bite things to investigate and end up exposed,” study author Natascha Wosnick of the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil, told Science News.

"Exposed?" Are we sure the sharks aren't getting high on purpose? 

Researchers noted that the drug-addled predators had been taken from popular tourist and dive spots, suggesting that they’d been exposed to wastewater from boats and urban developments, which may have been polluted with the aforementioned substances.

Ah - there we are. Add that to the list of things we can blame on tourists.

I kid, of course. Here in the Great Land, we love tourists; it's interesting to meet people from all over the world, and visitors are big contributors to our economy. But please, if you're visiting Alaska, don't bring any Bolivian Marching Powder along. If you've seen what can happen when a lower 48 black bear gets high on the toot, then imagine what a jacked-up 700-pound murder missile grizzly could do. 

At least in the case of the Bahamian sharks, it doesn't seem as though the levels of cocaine is enough to affect their behavior. The same would seem to apply to caffeine, which is good; nobody wants to contemplate the idea of sharks with wide, red eyes, sleep-deprived, and irritable.

Now, if we could only get someone to catch these sharks and put frickin' lasers on their heads...

This seems appropriate. 

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