'Cocaine sharks' may be consuming drugs dumped off the coast of Florida, sending them a little crazy, scientists say

• Sharks might be consuming drugs that are dumped off the Florida coast, scientists say.
• An upcoming Shark Week episode will investigate whether the drugs are impacting the animals.

Scientists think hungry sharks might be feeding on drugs dumped off the Florida coast and sending them a little crazy.

An upcoming Discovery Channel Shark Week episode, "Cocaine Sharks," looks into the theory, with its title referencing the "Cocaine Bear" that ingested nearly 75 lb of cocaine in 1985 – and loosely inspired a comedy horror film that came out earlier this year.

"It's a catchy headline to shed light on a real problem, that everything we use, everything we manufacture, everything we put into our bodies, ends up in our wastewater streams and natural water bodies, and these aquatic life we depend on to survive are then exposed to that," said Dr. Tracy Fanara, a Florida-based environmental engineer and lead member of the research team, according to The Guardian.

Studies had shown pharmaceuticals, including cocaine, methamphetamines, and ketamine, had affected fish, Fanara said.

Huge bales of cocaine have washed up on Florida's beaches for decades, usually being thrown into the sea by traffickers fleeing from law enforcement.

The US Coast Guard said it had recovered more than $186m of illegal narcotics seized in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean last month.

If these cocaine bales are a point source of pollution, it's "very plausible" sharks can be affected by this chemical, Fanara said. "Cocaine is so soluble that any of those packages open just a little, the structural integrity is destroyed, and the drug is in the water."

In the upcoming Shark Week episode, Fanara and British marine biologist Tom Hird conduct a series of experiments to determine whether the sharks in waters around Florida were consuming the dumped narcotics and whether this affected them.

The scientists observed unusual behavior by some of the sharks, per The Guardian.

This included a hammerhead swimming directly towards them while moving erratically, despite being a species that would typically avoid humans.

And at one point, a sandbar shark was seen swimming in circles as it appeared to focus on an imaginary object, despite nothing being there.

The scientists created packages that resembled cocaine bales and dropped them into the water to see how the sharks would respond. The sharks swam straight to the bales and took bites out of them, the outlet reported.

They also filled balls of bait with highly concentrated fish powder to simulate cocaine and see how the animals would react.

"It set their brains aflame. It was crazy," Hird says on the show, per The Guardian.

Researchers said the reaction was similar to catnip on felines.

However, the observations do not necessarily confirm that the sharks consume drugs, and Hind told LiveScience he hopes the show will lead to more research in the area.