Shark week gets 'high' ratings with 'Cocaine Sharks' unveiling Florida's oceanic underworld

A new TV series “Cocaine Sharks” explores the possibility that sharks off the coast of Florida are consuming cocaine dumped by drug smugglers in the ocean.

The show, which will premiere during Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” next week, follows marine biologist Tom Hird and environmental scientist Tracy Fanara as they conduct experiments on sharks in the Florida Keys, where fishermen have reported seeing fish behaving oddly.

“The deeper 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 Live Science.

In the episode, Hird and Fanara dive underwater and observe some sharks acting strangely.

They see a hammerhead shark, a shy species, charge at them and swim crookedly.

They also see a sandbar shark swim in tight circles, as if fixated on something invisible, at 60 feet below the surface.

They then test how sharks react to packages that look like cocaine bales.

They drop the fake bales near dummy swans and watch as sharks ignore the swans and bite the bales. One shark even swims away with a bale.

Hird and Fanara then try to mimic the effects of cocaine with a ball of fish powder that is highly concentrated to trigger a huge dopamine response in the sharks.

The sharks go wild, according to Live Science.

“I think we have got a potential scenario of what it may look like if you gave sharks cocaine,” Hird says on the show. “We gave them what I think is the next best thing. [It] set [their] brains aflame. It was crazy.” Finally, they drop imitation cocaine bales from an airplane to simulate how drug smugglers might dispose of them in the ocean.

They observe several shark species rushing to the fakes.

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Hird said their experiments do not prove that there are cocaine-addicted sharks off Florida.

More research would be needed and there could be many environmental factors that could explain the sharks’ behavior.

“We have no idea what [cocaine] could do to the shark,” Hird told Live Science, adding that different fish may react differently to the same chemical. “So we can’t even say well this is a baseline and go from here,” he said.

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