Just What We Need: Coked-Up Sharks
Brazilian scientists reported last week that they found traces of cocaine in the muscles and livers of 13 sharks taken from coastal waters near Rio de Janeiro. It’s thought that the drug gets into the water via drainage from illegal drug labs. It could also get there directly from users, through untreated sewage. Another possibility is that some of it comes from bales of cocaine that were lost or dumped in the water by drug traffickers.
Scientists are still working out how much threat this poses to the sharks themselves or to humans who eat the sharks. Presumably it does not turn the sharks into over-stoked investment bankers. Still, it can’t be good for the sharks or for the ecosystems they’re a part of.
Cocaine is far from the worst thing we dump in the sea. The 11 million metric tons of plastic that end up in the ocean each year are a far more serious problem. But the cocaine shark story, being so evocative, says something disturbing and terribly sad about what humans are doing to the planet we share with so many other life forms.
I often write about space exploration and the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. But news like this makes me think we’d be doing the galaxy a favor if we just stayed home and confined the damage we do to our own planet.
’til next time,
Avery
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