Sharks are ingesting drugs in the Bahamas

Sharks off the coast of the Bahamas are getting into drugs like cocaine, caffeine and painkillers — or rather, drugs are getting into them. The contaminated blood of species including nurse sharks and Caribbean reef sharks reveals the damage humans have done to paradisiac oceanic environments.

“We’re talking about a very remote island in the Bahamas,” says Natascha Wosnick, a biologist with the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil.

Wosnick is part of a team that has analyzed pollutants in sharks in the Caribbean and Brazil. In previous research, they found cocaine and rare earth elements in sharks off Rio de Janeiro.

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