Dolphins are one of the most popular animals because they are friendly and playful.
Something horrifying is happening to this beloved species.
And one terrifying discovery about dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico left scientists scared.
Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico have fentanyl and other drugs in them
Scientists have made a grim discovery about bottlenose dolphins living in the Gulf of Mexico.
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi researchers discovered that many dolphins have tested positive for having trace amounts of fentanyl and other drugs.
A dead dolphin was discovered floating in the Gulf of Mexico in 2020 and was taken back to the university to be studied.
Testing the blubber in the dolphin revealed what the gentle sea creature was being exposed to in the wild.
“When I started this project, we did what we call an untargeted study of the blubber, where we put it in a very fancy instrument that’s able to resolve all the compounds inside. We were looking for what we actually found,” Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi doctoral student Makayla Guinn said.
The researchers tested blubber samples from six dead dolphins and 83 living ones.
An astonishing 30 of the dolphins had traces of drugs in their system like fentanyl, muscle relaxers, and sedatives.
The six dead dolphins all had fentanyl in their system.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, can be lethal to humans with as little as two milligrams.
Scientists try to figure out how dolphins were exposed to drugs
Guinn said it was alarming the drugs were entering the water in the Gulf of Mexico.
“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,” Guinn explained. “These drugs and pharmaceuticals are entering our water and they have cascading effects in our marine life.”
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi marine biologist Dr. Dara Orbach has been trying to figure out how fentanyl and other drugs got into the dolphins’ systems.
“One possibility but not the only possibility is that drugs might becoming from our wastewater,” Orbach stated. “It’s likely they’re getting these pharmaceuticals in their system from eating prey. Those prey being the same fish and shrimp that we’re also eating over here, considering that the Coastal Bend is such an important fishing community, locally.”
Orbach revealed that this has been an ongoing problem because of the ages of the samples.
“Some of these samples we looked at are more than a decade old and those animals also had pharmaceuticals,” Orbach explained. “So we think this is a longstanding problem that no one’s been looking at.”
One of the dead dolphins was discovered near where a major fentanyl bust happened.
“We did find one dead dolphin in Baffin Bay in South Texas within one year of the largest liquid fentanyl drug bust in US history in the adjacent county,” Orbach said. “And the Mississippi dolphins comprised 40 percent of our total pharmaceutical detections, which leads us to believe this is a long-standing issue in the marine environment.”
The fentanyl crisis has far-reaching effects that no one could have ever imagined.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this story.
