IF you thought Cocaine Bear was scary, imagine being chased around the sea by Jaws after he’s had a few lines.

We assume you’re not reading this on a lilo off the Miami coast so there’s probably not too much to be immediately worried about regarding the rising threat of ‘cocaine sharks’.

But scientists do believe that the animals may be developing a taste for the drug thanks to the abundance of it cast overboard in Florida Keys, a popular route into the US for drug runners from South America.

The cocaine sharks phenomenon is being explored in an upcoming Discovery TV show during the channel’s annual ‘Shark Week’ event.

The show’s title ‘Cocaine Sharks’ has caused widespread interest before it has even aired, but is there enough science to back up the frightening theory?

“It’s a catchy headline to shed light on a real problem, that everything we use, everything we manufacture, everything we put into our bodies, ends up in our wastewater streams and natural water bodies, and these aquatic life we depend on to survive are then exposed to that,” Dr Tracy Fanara, lead member of the research team and a Florida based environmental engineer, told the Guardian.

“We’ve seen studies with pharmaceuticals, cocaine, methamphetamines, ketamine, all of these, where fish are being [affected] by drugs.

“If these cocaine bales are a point source of pollution, it’s very plausible [sharks] can be affected by this chemical. Cocaine is so soluble that any of those packages open just a little, the structural integrity is destroyed and the drug is in the water.”

During their observations for the documentary Fanara and British marine biologist Tom Hird saw sharks exhibiting peculiar behaviour.

They also conducted experiments by dropping dummy bales of the drugs into the water, which many of the sharks took bites out of.

Last month, the US Coast Guard announced the recovery of over £140million worth of illegal narcotics from the waters of the Caribbean and southern Florida. Despite these efforts, the impact of such seizures remains limited on an industry that continues to operate at record levels.

“While we were in the Keys filming, cocaine bales were washing ashore, like twice in one week, so it’s really a prevalent issue,” Fanara said.

She mentioned that determining the exact amount of cocaine the sharks were ingesting through merely preliminary experiments was an impossible task.

“At the end of every research publication you read ‘more research must be done’, and that’s definitely the conclusion from this.”

Reports that the phenomenon has reduced shark attacks due to the magnificent creatures having no appetite also need to be confirmed.