Poisoned seas produce fatal fish

Go into any restaurant in Florida and you will see grouper at the top of the menu. Grouper are tropical reef fish that thrive in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The most famous and largest member of the grouper family is the goliath grouper, a huge, slow-moving behemoth of the deep that scares almost no one. Many groupers tip the scales at more than 700 pounds.

An apex predator is one that lives at the top of the food chain, consuming all those below it in the chain. Much of its diet consists of less-than-apex predators. For a long time it has been assumed that the goliath grouper, because of its size, must be one of the sea's apex predators, along with the shark, the dolphin, and the human. But no more.

Studies have shown that the goliath is too slow to do much besides steal fishermen's bait and feast on other critters that scurry along the bottom of the sea. Florida's fishermen are incensed by this pilferage, partly because goliaths have been protected by law since 1990. The fishermen complain that goliaths are responsible for the reduction in lobster populations and are lobbying hard to end the outright ban on goliath fishing.

Sport fishermen frequently claim that "fighting" fish are more exciting to catch. Their desire to catch goliaths seems mystifying, for goliaths are large, slow-moving, and have no fear of humans, making them easy prey for spearfishing. Hunting the giant groupers is about as exciting as bringing down a cow with a shotgun.

Groupers remain protected under federal law, but they may have found a way to strike back at their only predator, man. Increasing phosphate mining and fertilizer runoff in the Gulf of Mexico have nourished huge blooms of poisonous algae--poisonous to humans, that is, not to groupers. Studies have shown that 3 to 7  percent of Caribbean residents and tourists are poisoned by the condition called ciguatera annually. The results may be minor--consisting of nausea, vomiting, and itching--or they may be serious, resulting in neurologic symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis and lasting many years. One percent of ciguatera sufferers die.

Ciguatera poisoning is something to be concerned about when eating goliaths. They live so long that the chances of their becoming infected are greater than for their much smaller cousins. Cathleen Bester of the Florida Museum of Natural History assures us that cases of ciguatera poisoning are very rare. Those of us who studied probability in school may not consider a 7 percent possibility of infection as very rare. Horse racing aficionados observe that 10-1 shots frequently finish in the money.

On the other hand, Lori Bester of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reports that ciguatera is the most commonly reported marine toxic disease in the world. Lori suggests that you should never eat barracuda or moray eel and should exercise caution with snapper and grouper. I suppose she means you can eat these fish, but just don't eat very much.

If there was ever a fish that encouraged overeating by its very size, the goliath would be it. So perhaps, if the ban on fishing is lifted, the great goliath unintentionally will take its revenge on man after all.

[Note: Research for this post was provided by Matthew Gamel, a graduate student at Florida Gulf Coast University. His help is appreciated.]

Marissa Alexander gets a retrial

Marissa Alexander has been granted a retrial in a case that has gotten national attention. Alexander shot a gun at her husband, whom she claimed was threatening her life. Alexander also claimed that he had abused her physically. It was her first offense. A jury found Alexander guilty of discharging a gun in the commission of a felony. Under Florida law, this conviction carries a mandatory sentence of 20 years in prison.

Florida's mandatory sentencing laws have filled its prisons to overflowing. The first such laws passed in 1979. At that time, Florida had about 10,000 inmates. In 2010, it had over 100,000. The incidence of crime has been falling in the state and the U.S. for many years, yet still the prison population increases.

African-Americans outnumber whites in Florida prisons 4.4 to 1. In the general population, blacks represent only 16 percent of the population.

There is a remarkable disparity in Florida's gun laws. Under its "stand your ground" law, a woman has a right to kill someone if she believes her life is in danger. But under Florida's mandatory sentencing law, if a woman does not believe her life is in danger, even if she misses entirely, as in this case, she can be sent to jail for 20 years. The question arises, how can you tell whether she thought her life was in danger or not, especially if she claims she did think it was?

An appeals court granted a retrial in this case because the judge mistakenly told the jury that Alexander had to prove she was acting in self-defense, but the law actually requires the prosecution to prove that she was not defending herself.

A comparison of this case with the Trayvon Martin shooting is instructive. In the Martin case, the shooter was declared not to be the aggressor, even though he was following Martin for several minutes before catching up to him. In the Alexander case, the defendant was declared the aggressor after she walked from the garage, where the gun was stored, to the living room, where the shooting occurred. Both defendants claimed they feared for their lives.

Martin's killer was acquitted. Alexander will likely have a chance at a plea bargain during her second trial, and may end up serving very little prison time beyond the 3 years she has already spent in prison.

Laws should be reasonable. A reasonable person should be able to tell whether a law has been broken or not. Laws should not be able to be twisted so that a white man with a good lawyer goes free while a poor African-American woman goes to prison after committing similar, if not identical, offenses.

The Alexander case is hardly the only abuse of a mandatory sentencing law, but it is a blatant one.

Our Founding Felons: A crime is a crime whether the criminal thinks so or not

A felony is a serious crime, usually punishable by imprisonment for over a year. Actions committed by people two hundred years ago are sometimes excused as being commonly accepted at that time. While slavery is a serious felony today, at the time of the U.S. Revolution (1776), slave owners were prominent members of society. Owning slaves made them more powerful because slaveholding brought wealth.

Looking a actions as criminal only if the criminals themselves thought their actions were wrong would cede all the moral arguments to the criminals. Criminal organizations today have elaborate codes of honor, like the omerta of the Sicilian crime families, which create an entirely different moral system. For the crime families, the worst crime is informing for the police. For them, robbery, murder, and extortion are simply the means of conducting business.

We must look upon the actions of our founding fathers today as crimes if we find that other people at that time considered them as crimes, but the founding fathers ignored the opinions of others. Majority agreement does not make a law just, it only gives criminals justification for their actions.

Among the crimes that may have been committed by the founders—Washington, Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson—were the following:

1. Enslavement
2. Rape
3. Genocide

Washington and Jefferson both owned slaves. Slavery was a customary practice in Virginia at that time, but what is customary may also be criminal. Abolition movements began as early as 1760 among the colonists. The Quakers began liberating their own slaves in the late 17th century. By 1774, they had succeeded in abolishing slavery within the movement.

Quakers wrote books and pamphlets decrying the ills of slavery. Some of them also made speeches on the subject. It was not possible for an American during the revolutionary period not to realize that many people opposed slavery.

The First Great Awakening, a revitalization of Christian churches in the 1730s and 1740s, decried slavery. Pennsylvania became the first state to pass anti-slavery legislation in 1760. Massachusetts adopted a constitution that declared all men equal. Thereafter, a number of law suits claimed that slavery was illegal in Massachusetts.

Washington and Jefferson both knew that slavery was being outlawed in several states, yet they did not free their own slaves. Neither man freed a slave during his lifetime, though Washington freed most of his slaves in his will. Jefferson freed only a few slaves in his will.

Both Washington and Jefferson had slave mistresses. Such a union is tantamount to rape, since the woman has no choice but to submit to her owner.

Andrew Jackson could have been prosecuted for the crime of genocide if that crime had been defined when Jackson ordered the four civilized nations to leave their land in the South and walk to new homes in Oklahoma. This act today would be called ethnic cleansing and is considered a form of genocide. Four thousand native Americans died along the Trail of Tears.

Long before he became president, Andrew Jackson led a merciless war of extermination against the escaped slaves who lived with the Seminoles in Florida. He began his career by leading a force of American soldiers and Native American allies against Negro Fort, a stronghold for escaped slaves in Northern Florida. He led a flotilla up the Suwannee River and provoked Spanish soldiers to fire on his forces. Jackson was thus able to claim that the Spanish had initiated the war.

Jackson used the superior marksmanship of his gunners to explode the powder magazine at Negro Fort. The resultant explosion killed all but 30 of the 3000 people within the fort. Many women and children were among the dead. Jackson justified his actions by saying he acted to “chastise a lawless foe, who, combined with a band of Negro brigands, have for some time past been carrying on a cruel and unprovoked war against the citizens of the United States.”

Andrew Jackson was the most perfidious and violent of the Founding Fathers.

Key West Pirates (Hemingway's Bar)

Key West Pirates, an oil painting on wood panel by Holly Masri, appears at first glance a simple depiction of a bar. The place is Tony's Bar in Key West, Florida. The bar opens onto the street, very unusual for an American bar, where the prejudice against alcoholic consumption generally forces serious drinkers indoors. Two men are drinking at the bar, one seated, the other standing, while a bartender looks on. The most unusual aspect of the painting (and of the actual bar) is the low ceiling, encrusted with thousands of business cards left over the years by tourists.

Key West is the southernmost point of Florida, in many respects a tropical paradise. But the artist has chosen a pallet devoid of pastels. There are no flowers or broadleaf plants to be seen. Instead, the colors are somber. The frame cuts off the bright world of sun and sea. The two customers may be tourists, but their shirts are dark, as is the interior of the bar. Both are brawny and young. One of them has a skull and crossbones on the back of his shirt.

The two men in the bar are not pirates, for this is clearly a modern scene. They wear bermuda shorts, athletic shoes, and tee-shirts. One of them rests his foot on a backpack. They do have long, curly hair that reminds the viewer of 17th century wigs. They are engrossed by something to their right, which the viewer cannot see.

This is a famous bar, where celebrities met and toasted each others' health during the 1930s. At that time it was known as Sloppy Joe's. Its best known habitue was Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway arrived in Key West in 1936, when his health was already suffering from war injuries and too much drink. He brought with him friends like the writer John Dos Passos and the artist Waldo Peirce. Peirce also painted a scene in Tony's Bar, with his friend Hemingway sitting at the bar next to Peirce's wife, Alzira, and Peirce himself standing at the right.

The room next door, the room into which Masri's pirates are staring, can be seen in Peirce's painting. It is a dance hall, where sailors dance with pickups and bar girls. Perhaps the woman sitting at the end of the bar is one of those girls, being attended by two sailors in uniform and an elderly gentleman. Masri's pirates are looking at something else, though. The sailors are long gone, the dance hall a memory.

Masri's picture has ghosts, including the ghost of Hemingway and the ghost of the bar that used to be there. It has another theme as well: impostors. Sloppy Joe's Bar moved about a block away after Hemingway left town. It now occupies much larger, much grander premises than the bar depicted by Masri and Peirce. The current Sloppy Joe's, sold to tourists as Hemingway's hang out, does not much resemble the real hang out, now known as Tony's Bar.

Masri's painting captures the atmosphere of a place on the edge of history, where the people and times that made it famous are receding into the past. But Masri is not nostalgic. She depicts the scene honestly, portraying what it has become, a humble respite from the tropical sun that bakes Key West.

Note: Key West Pirates is on sale here.