‘Cocaine sharks’ found in waters off Brazil

2023 was a big year for sharks on coke. First came Cocaine Shark, a B movie about mutant, murderous sharks (which, apparently, never did the drug). A few months later, documentary filmmakers released the more sober Cocaine Sharks, which tried to find out whether sharks in the Gulf of Mexico devour the many packages of coke lost or dumped by drug smugglers.

“It’s a catchy headline to shed light on a real problem,” Tracy Fanara, an environmental engineer in Florida, told The Guardian last year. Fanara participated in the doc and highlighted the issue of wildlife being exposed to drugs and other pollution. In the end, however, the evidence for coke-addled sharks was inconclusive.

Now, scientists in Brazil report the first proof that the animals are indeed exposed to cocaine. Thirteen sharpnose sharks taken from coastal waters near Rio de Janeiro had traces of the drug in their muscles and livers, researchers report this week in Science of the Total Environment.