‘Cocaine Sharks’ Believed to Have Feasted On Drugs

A Marine biologist predicts that sharks living off the coast of Florida are feasting on drugs left behind by drug traffickers trying to move product into the United States, nicknaming them “cocaine sharks.”

Tom Hird told Live Science he wanted to investigate whether or not sharks have ingested cocaine and the effects that the drugs had “on these delicate ocean ecosystems.”

For many years, cocaine has often been found being washed onto beaches or discovered in the ocean by officials. The ⚓U.S. Coast Guard released a report on June 17 detailing how more than 14,153 pounds of cocaine worth more than $186 million had been found in Miami.

“The deeper the story here is the way that chemicals, pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are entering our waterways — entering our oceans — and what effect that they then could go on to have on these delicate ocean ecosystems,” Hird told the outlet.

In Hird’s documentary, “Cocaine Sharks” he and Tracy Fanara, an environmental scientist from the University of Florida