{"id":377163,"date":"2026-04-01T22:03:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/377163\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T22:03:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:03:19","slug":"caribbean-sharks-becoming-more-aggressive-due-to-cocaine-spilled-in-water-by-tourists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/377163\/","title":{"rendered":"Caribbean sharks &#8216;becoming more aggressive&#8217; due to cocaine spilled in water by tourists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No, seriously. Sharks in the Caribbean may be showing more signs of aggression thanks to ingesting cocaine that may have been accidentally spilt in the water by tourists.<\/p>\n<p>While Cocaine Bear was a hilariously stupid B-movie that turned out to be based on a real story, it turns out that a real-life sequel may already be in the works \u2014 as a number of <a href=\"https:\/\/extra.ie\/tag\/sharks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sharks<\/a> caught off the coast of the Bahamas tested positive for drugs, including cocaine.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 30 sharks, spanning three species, tested positive for drugs after they were caught off the coast of a remote island near the Bahamas.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Great-White-Shark-4.jpg\" alt=\"Pic: Shutterstock\" class=\"wp-image-1507590\"  \/>No, seriously \u2014 sharks in the Caribbean may be showing more signs of aggression thanks to ingesting cocaine that may have been accidentally spilt in the water by tourists. Pic: Shutterstock<\/p>\n<p>The most common drug found in the sharks\u2019 systems was caffeine, while acetaminophen and diclofenac \u2014 the active ingredients in Tylenol (paracetamol) and Voltaren \u2014 were the second and third most common.<\/p>\n<p>However, two of the sharks tested positive for cocaine \u2014 and while some believe that it was due to traces of drugs being carried by sewage, experts believe that, since the sharks were found near an inactive fish farm popular with divers, then the divers themselves may be the culprits.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are increasingly recognised as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in marine environments, particularly in areas undergoing rapid urbanisation and tourism-driven development,\u2019 scientists said, while scientist Natascha Wosnick said that sharks become exposed while biting into foreign objects.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/greatwhite.jpg\" alt=\"Great White Shark\" class=\"wp-image-1530286\"  \/>Nearly 30 sharks off the coast of a remote island in the Bahamas tested positive for several drugs, with two of them testing positive for cocaine.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It\u2019s mostly because people are going there, peeing in the water and dumping their sewage in the water,\u2019 Ms Wosnick, a scientist with the Federal University of Paran\u00e1 in Brazil, explained to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/cocaine-sharks-drugs-bahamas-eleuthera\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Science News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018[Sharks] bite things to investigate and end up exposed.\u2019 <\/p>\n<p>While the sharks who were tested didn\u2019t exhibit much of a change in behaviour, it\u2019s bizarrely a story that\u2019s been told a few times so far \u2014 with fishermen previously claiming to have seen sharks eating through bricks of cocaine that were dumped in the water by drug traffickers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Great-White-Shark-2a.jpg\" alt=\"Expert explains how likely it is that Irish people will have this unwanted encounter in our waters this summer. Pic: Getty Images\" class=\"wp-image-1507588\"  \/>Pic: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Another incident, which was blamed on coked-up sharks, included a hammerhead, which swam at humans at an odd angle \u2014 which is made even more bizarre by the fact that, usually, hammerhead sharks avoid humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No, seriously. Sharks in the Caribbean may be showing more signs of aggression thanks to ingesting cocaine that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-377163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}