CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Many of us know just how harmful fentanyl can be in humans, but what about animals? That's what several researchers at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi are peeling back the layers after finding traces of the drug in bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico.
While conducting a routine boating survey in September 2020, university researchers came across a dead dolphin, floating in the water.
They took the dolphin back to their research lab. Then about two years later, they began to use the carcass for hormone blubber analysis but came across the drug instead.
"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," Doctoral student Makayla Guinn, said.
Guinn and her team worked closely with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Texas Parks and Wildlife and Precision Toxicological Consultancy to begin conducting a more in-depth study. They also received support from the Frazier Family Foundation, Inc.
Guinn told KRIS 6 News reporter Alexis Scott, there were more than 3,000 different compounds inside the dolphin blubber. Within those compounds were findings of several pharmaceutical drugs, including sedatives and relaxants as well.
According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine.
KRIS 6 News learned, at least 89 dolphin blubber samples were analyzed within the study, including 83 collected through live dolphin biopsies and six from dead dolphins. Pharmaceuticals were found in 30 of those samples. Fentanyl was found in all six of the dead dolphins, according to the publication.
The dozens of dolphins tested were selected from Redfish Bay and the Laguna Madre in Texas and the Mississippi Sound. KRIS 6 News was told dolphins are often used to examine ecosystem health in contaminant research because their blubber can store contaminants and be sampled.
“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," Guinn added.
Accompanying Guinn in the study was lead investigating researcher and marine biologist, Dr. Dara Orbach. The big question they haven't been able to answer is 'How did the fentanyl get in dolphin blubber?".
"One possibility but not the only possibility is that drugs might becoming from our wastewater," Orbach said. "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 believes this discovery could lead to more wide-ranging research to trace the source of the fentanyl and limit potential damage to the ecosystem.
"Some of these samples we looked at are more than a decade old and those animals also had pharmaceuticals. So we think this is a longstanding problem that no one's been looking at," Orbach said.
Both Orbach and Guinn are in the process of furthering their research. They're hoping to bring about more awareness to the community on how important it is to preserve our wildlife."
More details on the study, "Pharmaceuticals in the Blubber of Live Free-Swimming Common Bottlenose Dolphins” can be found here.
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