Cocaine pollution in rivers and lakes may disrupt behaviour of salmon, study finds
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- Dr Jack Brand warns that salmon exposed to cocaine may face trade‑offs, needing more foraging and risking predator exposure.
- Cocaine at environmentally realistic levels caused juvenile Atlantic salmon to swim up to 5 km farther than controls in the final weeks.
- Benzoylecgonine – the primary metabolite of cocaine – doubled the distance, with exposed fish traveling nearly 14 km farther and moving 12 km northward.
- Lake Vättern in Sweden, a 2,000 sq km lake, served as the field test site where acoustic tracking recorded salmon movements over two months.
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences conducted the study, publishing results in Current Biology and highlighting drug pollution as a rising biodiversity risk.
Why it matters: Fisheries managers face lower catches as salmon expend extra energy and become more vulnerable to predators, while pharmaceutical firms face pressure to develop greener drugs, potentially increasing R&D costs.
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