Researchers are in a total panic after they discovered fentanyl in the last place you’d ever expect

Fentanyl is an extremely dangerous narcotic that has resulted in countless human deaths.

While officials struggle to try and stop the flow of this dangerous drug into the United States, it’s affecting more than just people.

And now researchers are in a total panic after they discovered fentanyl in the last place you’d ever expect.

Traces of fentanyl found in dolphins

Human activity affects more than just people; it also affects plant life and wildlife.

Now, researchers in Corpus Christi have discovered fentanyl and other drugs in Gulf of Mexico dolphins.

Students and faculty at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi have tested blubber from 89 common bottlenose dolphins since 2022.

What they found was disturbing: fentanyl and other pharmaceuticals were found in the blubber of 30 of the dolphins.

The research started with a dolphin in Baffin Bay, just south of Corpus Christi in Kennedy and Kleberg counties.

Professor of biology Dara Orbach was conducting a routine survey of the bay and taking photos of bottlenose dolphins for population research four years ago.

She discovered a freshly deceased dolphin that died just hours or perhaps even a few minutes beforehand.

The professor towed the dolphin back to her lab on campus and placed it in a freezer, and her initial plans were to dissect the animal and use it for research.

Then, two years ago, Orbach offered tissue samples from the Baffin Bay to a doctoral student named Makayla Guinn.

Guinn was researching hormones in dolphins and analyzed the sample.

She found fentanyl present among the hundreds of other compounds detected and said the discovery was quite alarming.

“It doesn’t tell you how much is in there, just that these are possible,” said Orbach.

Guinn added, “It’s not what we were looking for . . . but ultimately, these things do have the capacity to enter our waterways in large quantities and they have chemical properties that allow them to accumulate in tissues such as blubber.”

The research ultimately focused on three pharmaceutical drugs: fentanyl, meprobamate (a sedative and drug used to treat anxiety disorders), and carisoprodol (a muscle relaxant).

Orbach said they chose those three drugs “because we thought they were very alarming to find in a dolphin.”

Disturbing finds in the Gulf of Mexico

The team collected samples from other areas to confirm the presence of the drugs in the Baffin Bay dolphin.

They also tested samples from Redfish Bay and Laguna Madre to perform a more accurate and targeted analysis.

The researchers also took postmortem samples from five more dolphins found near the Corpus Christi Bay area and tested samples from Mississippi Bay and Redish Bay in Texas between 2012 and 2014.

Out of the total 89 samples of blubber, drugs were found in 30, and fentanyl was specifically found in 24 of the samples including in six dead animals.

Orbach said, “We were looking for hormones in a dolphin that I happened to have in my freezer, and I think we are so fortunate to have stumbled across something so intriguing and fascinating.”

She said other researchers have found evidence of drugs in other marine animals like shrimp and fish, but there is very limited research on dolphins and other apex predators. 

What’s most concerning is that Orbach said the drugs are likely a “long-standing issue that has not been looked at before” since the drugs were found in older samples.