Pharmaceuticals in the blubber of live free-swimming common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

Pharmaceuticals prevent and treat diseases, yet inappropriate intake can result in harmful effects including mortality. Contaminants have become recurrent public and wildlife health concerns. Bioaccumulation of contaminants can occur throughout trophic levels of the food web. Dolphins are apex predators often used as sentinel species to assess the health of marine ecosystems because their lipid-rich blubber stores contaminants. We used blubber samples collected from live free-swimming and postmortem common bottlenose dolphins (<i>Tursiops truncatus</i>) in the Gulf of Mexico to explore the presence of pharmaceutical contaminants in the marine ecosystem. Targeted analysis of blubber using ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with Orbitrap Fusion Tribrid mass spectrometry confirmed the presence of fentanyl, carisoprodol, or meprobamate in 30 of the 89 dolphins assessed. We provide the first detection of human pharmaceuticals stored in live free-swimming marine mammals, with important implications for understanding ecosystem health.