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Antidepressants In the Water Are Making Shrimp Suicidal

Posted by samzenpus on from the crustacean-frustration dept.

Antidepressants may help a lot of people get up in the morning but new research shows they are making shrimp swim into that big bowl of cocktail sauce in the sky. Alex Ford, a marine biologist at the University of Portsmouth, found that shrimp exposed to the antidepressant fluoxetine are 5 times more likely to swim towards light instead of away from it. Shrimp usually swim away from light as it is associated with birds or fishermen.

3 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. So BP is SAVING crustaceans? by ibsteve2u · · Score: 5, Funny

    By hiding the light with a nice thick layer of oil?

    --
    Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
  2. No Fear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't think it's that they want to die.

    They probably just don't fear the light anymore.

  3. So is this happening now? by photogchris · · Score: 5, Informative

    Okay, after reading the summery of the study. Parasites in shrimp can cause them to travel toward light and swim against gravity. The parasites act as a serotonin modulator. One particular antidepressant Fluoxetine does the same thing. This action can be bad for the shrimp. The level of Fluoxetine was 100 ng/L. How many liters in the gulf? About 2.43400 × 10^18 liters. So we need to dump a littler over 24 million metric tons of Fluoxetine into the gulf to see this concentration? Actually I am asking, I could be wrong on my math.

    Oh I get it, waste drugs should not be put into the ecosystem. They can affect animals just as much as humans. But the story this links to is just FUD and the study is behind a paywall.