00:00 - "Cocaine Shark."
00:01 No, it's not the title of a new movie.
00:03 It's a real concern for researchers
00:05 because of the amount of drugs found dumped into the ocean.
00:08 - Now they're trying to tag and then study these sharks
00:10 to see how it might be impacting them.
00:12 Fox 35's Esther Bauer shows us this new study.
00:15 - How do sharks react if they come in contact with cocaine?
00:20 - It sounds crazy, but researchers say sharks
00:23 ingesting cocaine isn't out of the water.
00:25 - If these cocaine bales are traveling
00:27 in the same pathways as these sargassum patches,
00:31 the sharks may be exposed without even realizing it.
00:35 - Dr. Tracy Funara is an environmental engineer
00:39 on a mission to understand what effect cocaine
00:42 would have on sharks.
00:44 - We know with other species,
00:46 their metabolism might slow down,
00:48 their reproduction, their movement might actually slow down.
00:51 We know with other species, things speed up.
00:54 - It matters in Florida because drug bales
00:57 are found in the water often.
00:59 - There has been no research specifically on sharks
01:02 and cocaine in the Florida waters where it's most prevalent.
01:06 - So far, Dr. Funara has done preliminary tests
01:08 on how sharks would react to stimulants in the water.
01:12 - If the shark would choose the bale
01:13 over its common food source.
01:15 So that was one of the tests.
01:17 - Along with other shark experts,
01:19 they're now expanding the study
01:20 and want to tag sharks and test blood samples
01:23 because everything, even drugs in the water,
01:26 ends up somewhere and has a direct impact on humans.
01:29 - That everything that we put in our bodies,
01:31 that we put on our bodies,
01:33 all of that ends up in our ecosystem,
01:35 affecting the aquatic life that we depend on to survive.
01:38 - Reporting on the Space Coast, Esther Bauer, Fox 35 News.
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