'Cocaine Sharks' Could Mean 'Trouble' for Ocean, Shark Week Special Explores (Exclusive)

Is there truth to rumors of cocaine-fueled sharks swimming the waterways of the Florida Keys? Shark expert and marine biologist Tom Hird is out to prove that the wild stories are more fact than fiction – and could have a troublesome impact on the ocean ecosystem. Hird opened up to PopCulture.com ahead of the Shark Week debut of Cocaine Sharks, premiering Wednesday, July 26 on Discovery.

While the stories of sharks ingesting bags of cocaine lost overboard in the drug trade have yet to be made concrete, Hird thinks of them more as "fact waiting to be proved." He told PopCulture of the small, biologically-active area of water between south Central America and the Florida Keys, "It's no rumor that they are shipping a ton of drugs and these things are constantly going overboard. Sharks are going to come into contact with it, either directly by biting and ingesting, or indirectly, if one of these bales gets damaged and starts to leak. ... So, it's no rumor for me, it's just waiting to be proved is what it is."

Proving that the sharks are acting under the influence of drugs is the "tricky" part. "We are having to look at behavior, because it's not very easy to stop a shark and then just say, 'Oh, is there any chance we can just swab your gills really quick? Run that through the testing machine?' Doesn't happen. And they're not swimming around with great noses full of Charlie either, so you have to go on their behavior."

Finding sharks acting unusually, either through their interest in humans or their swimming behaviors, is the first step. And while that may be easy, it's more difficult trying to "marry up the behavior with what's causing the behavior," Hird explained. In Cocaine Sharks, Hird's investigation into "weird queer behaviors in sharks that we wouldn't expect" is the start of what he thinks could be a "very, very long set of research" to get down to the bottom of things.

It's more than just an interesting story at the heart of this research – there are also major ecological ramifications. "Sharks have been around on this planet since before trees. Sharks have been around on this planet since before flowers. So, as far as a steady hand on the tiller, controlling influence on this planet, that's sharks," Hird advised, warning, "If the top predators in these ecosystems are wrong, they are messed up, then that means that the way that they act on predator/prey relationships is going to change. They may start losing interest in things like reproduction." He continued, "It's a real diversion from their true behaviors, and because they are so, so vital to the ecosystems, if we've got sharks not turning up for work, doing their 9 to 5, then well, the oceans are in trouble." Cocaine Sharks premieres Wednesday, July 26 at 10 p.m. ET on Discovery.