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Some Rivers Are So Drug-Polluted, Their Eels Get High on Cocaine (nationalgeographic.com) 85

Joshua Rapp Learn, reporting for National Geographic: Critically endangered eels hyped up on cocaine could have trouble making a 3,700-mile trip to mate and reproduce -- new research warns. And while societies have long grappled with ways to cope with the use of illicit drugs, less understood are the downstream effects these drugs might have on other species after they enter the aquatic environment through wastewater. So, in the name of research, scientists pushed cocaine on European eels in labs for 50 days in a row, in an effort to monitor the effects of the experience on the fish.

European eels have complex life patterns, spending 15 to 20 years in fresh or brackish water in European waterways before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to spawn in the Sargasso Sea just east of the Caribbean and the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. While the eels are also farmed for food, the wild population is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to dams and other waterway changes that block their migrations, overfishing, and different types of water pollution. The eels are vulnerable to trace concentrations of cocaine, particularly in their early lives, according to the researchers of a study published in Science of the Total Environment.

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Some Rivers Are So Drug-Polluted, Their Eels Get High on Cocaine

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  • Cocaine (Score:5, Funny)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:42PM (#56817578)

    And the eels were all heard singing...

    If you want to hang out, you've gotta take her out, cocaine
    If you want to get down, get down on the ground, cocaine
    She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie,
    Cocaine
    If you got that lose, you want to kick them blues, cocaine
    When your day is done, and you want to ride on cocaine
    She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie,
    Cocaine
    If your day is gone, and you want to ride on, cocaine
    Don't forget this fact, you can't get it back, cocaine
    She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie,
    Cocaine
    She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie,
    Cocaine

  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:45PM (#56817598)
    Look, Mick Jagger is fine, so are other eels.
    • You mean Keith Richards. How is he still alive!?

      • You mean Keith Richards. How is he still alive!?

        Genes baby...genes.

        Aside from the amazing music he's given the world, I sincerely hope he donates his body to science so they can study his DNA and everything else...to see how he just still keeps on processing oxygen.

        Although he'll likely still outlive all of us here on /. , I hope future generations can learn from whatever keeps him going....and going....and going.....

      • You mean Keith Richards. How is he still alive!?

        Cocaine!

  • Illicit drugs? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:48PM (#56817618) Journal
    Are we really suggesting that the random list of substances we've banned are going to have some sort of magical property vs all the other substances we pass on in our wastewater? This particular species may be in some way impacted by this particular substance but given that there are dozens of commonly prescribed medications that are objectively more dangerous to living things than the list we've banned because they cause "euphoria" I fail to see the point of this particular research.
    • I'm pretty sure these "scientists" just really wanted to use their grant money to buy cocaine.
      • I'm pretty sure these "scientists" just really wanted to use their grant money to buy cocaine.

        I think they just blew it on blow too...

    • by Anonymous Coward

      It'd be much easier in the long term to deal with those substances if we hadn't declared them illegal, so we could instead regulate their production (and distribution, sales, etc.) and demand the producers don't dump their waste on the eels. That magical property vs. all the other substances is precisely and accurately that we've declared them illegal and as a result the wastes of their production don't get passed through wastewater treatment or otherwise get handled with care for the wildlife, like these e

    • For that matter Cocaine isn't even an innately illicit or banned substance. Last I heard it is still used on a frequent basis in certain areas of medical practice.
      • by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @03:07PM (#56818080)
        Frequently would be a bit of an overstatement; it's used in a small number of surgeries, usually endoscopic sinus procedures.
        • Er forgot to add, surgical procedures are *all* it's used for... you can't get a prescription for cocaine for any condition. Unlike methamphetamine, which is given by prescription, even to children, as a last-line ADHD treatment if regular amphetamines and things like methylphenidate (Ritalin) don't work.
    • I'd be more curious of the effects of something like caffeine which I'm sure has become ubiquitous in the waters around developed areas.

    • by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      Rx drugs in the water supply has already been studied. It was all the buzz a couple years ago, now they're looking into the impact of illegal drugs too, as it's not necessarily intuitive enough make it to the water supply to matter.

  • "Guguguguguguh-yeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!! I'm Dr. Rockso! The rock 'n roll clown! I do COCAINE!!!"

  • by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:51PM (#56817628)

    Everyone knows that Eels prefer Crystal Meth to Cocaine.

  • This is a real problem: localized pollution. While people scream and cry about "climate change", their water and air are being polluted by local sources. This has an immediate effect on the entire ecosystems. In addition - when you destroy and drain marshlands you will immediately have flooding in surrounding areas. You don't need to wait for climate change for this to happen. People talk about Manhattan getting flooded regularly because of sea level rise caused by climate change. This always amuses me, bec
  • I think not.. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming....

    If it's a problem, stop letting dealers and users flush their stash during arrest proceedings by always breaching though the bathroom walls.

    (sarc: off)

    • Just let the coke heads know it's being excreted unmetabolized and they will drink their own pee.

      Tweaks in jail fight to drink the pee of recently arrested tweakers.

      Don't even start on psychedelic guru pee, fucking hippies.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      My hovercraft is full of eels.

  • High on Cocaine...

    HT: Jerry Garcia

  • So, in the name of research, scientists pushed cocaine on European eels in labs for 50 days in a row, in an effort to monitor the effects of the experience on the fish.

    Yeah, that's totally a sensical thing to do -- definitely no research assistants cut into the stash at all. Nope.

    European eels have complex life patterns, spending 15 to 20 years in fresh or brackish water in European waterways before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to spawn in the Sargasso Sea just east of the Caribbean and the U.S. Eastern Sea

    • by hipp5 ( 1635263 )

      Yeah, that's totally a sensical thing to do -- definitely no research assistants cut into the stash at all. Nope.

      I'm sure you said it in jest, but in case not: the bio labs at my undergrad university had some ongoing experiments involving cocaine and I talked to some of the researchers about it. There was sooo much bureaucracy and procedure they had follow with the "stash". Basically every fleck of the stuff had to be accounted for at all times.

  • hopefully, now that society is accepting medical and recreational marijuana, cocaine is next.

    Just like marijuana ("marihuana") was demonized for it's association with Mexicans, cocaine was demonized for it's association with blacks. (Specifically, the fear that black men would snort a line of cocaine and then rape your wife or daughter).

    Meanwhile, bored housewives, business executives, etc had been using low doses of cocaine for years without problems. To this day, many slashdot readers, tech workers

    • It's time to legalize it, but that's because the alternatives (untested analogs) are worse and impossible to control.

    • Yea, I'm sure the eels in the rivers would just love that.... Let's just flush the stuff more often. What could go wrong?
      • Q: Why would you flush perfectly good drugs down the toilet? A: Because the fuzz is kicking in your door!

        Drugs belong in our bodies, not in our toilets. Legalize cocaine. For the environment.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      We already had that stage when it was legal. Wikipedia page for cocaine has amazing ads from late 1800s and early 1900s for cocaine.

      It was utterly devastating for communities, because unlike marijuana, cocaine is actually extremely addictive for overwhelming majority of people and directly overrides one of our primary motivational systems.

  • Let The Good Times Roll......Eel Guitar Solo.........

  • polluted waters... Fertilizer & pesticide run off @RestorationAgD http://bit.ly/1nCBv9S [bit.ly]
  • I thought our daily catch looked a bit too upbeat. [attackofthecute.com]

  • Tell me that giving cocaine to a bunch swimming fangs doesn't sound like a B monster movie.

  • I was wondering why my hovercraft was full of eels
  • Reads like a classic click bait title.
  • Is the Sargasso full of cocaine? If not, why the concern about young eels coming into contact with it? Plus, that's a chunk of ocean, not a river, so I'm further confused about how these young eels could be encountering cocaine infused river water.
  • Sargassum and ghost pirates that aren't really ghosts and aren't even very good pirates. Everyone knows that.

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