Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico have tested positive for fentanyl, leaving scientists shocked and worried about the potential implications, according to a new study.
Researchers at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration detected traces of the drugs in the blubber of more than a dozen living and deceased dolphins, according to TAMU-CC.
Blubber samples were taken from 89 dolphins, including 83 living dolphins and six deceased. Researchers discovered fentanyl in 18 dolphins, including all of the dead, and other pharmaceuticals were discovered in 30 of the dolphins, according to the study, "Pharmaceuticals in the Blubber of Live Free-Swimming Common Bottlenose Dolphins."
"It's not something we were looking for, so of course we were alarmed to find something like fentanyl, especially with the fentanyl crisis happening in the world right now. These drugs and pharmaceuticals are entering our water and they have cascading effects in our marine life," doctoral student Makayla Guinn, a graduate assistant on the study, told KRIS-TV.
While researchers were not able to determine the exact amount of the drugs present in the dolphins' blubber, they said that the fact that they are there at all is enough for concern, as reported by KIII-TV.
"For there to be drugs in a dolphin means that the drugs are either in the water, or they're in the prey that they're consuming," Guinn told KIII-TV.
Researchers said the fentanyl could have ended up in the water as a result of smugglers wanting to get rid of evidence, or could have been on ships that sank.
"We did find one dead dolphin in Baffin Bay in South Texas within one year of the largest liquid fentanyl drug bust in U.S. history in the adjacent county. And the Mississippi dolphins comprised 40% of our total pharmaceutical detections, which leads us to believe this is a long-standing issue in the marine environment," Dr. Dara Orbach, an assistant professor at TAMU-CC and a principal investigator on the study, told the university.
The professor also told KRIS-TV that some of the dolphin samples containing traces of drugs were "more than a decade old," meaning that the ecosystem could have been facing this issue for much longer than researchers have known.
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