Word: grouper
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Squirrelly's Grouper, for example, takes place on Hatteras, on North Carolina's Outer Banks, and deals with a reclusive commercial fisherman who hauls in a record-breaking specimen, a Warsaw grouper the "size of an Oldsmobile." The narrator, who owns the local marina, relates all the subsequent excitement and then warns, "Now if you don't already know, this story winds up with a punch from so far out in left field there's just no way you can see it coming, but I can't apologize for that." Nor, given the artful conclusion, should he. Stolen Kiss moves...
...pick out a fish hovering a mere 1 1/2 in. off the bottom. Other refinements include alarms that signal a fish's presence and multihued video screens that are designed to identify various species by a color code -- red for dolphin, for example, or pink for bottom feeders like grouper and snapper...
Another big seller is "square grouper," sly fisherman talk for the bales of marijuana smuggled ashore. Dope has brought a glitzy prosperity to many sleepy towns: dreamily painted vans have replaced rusted pickup trucks, and stone crabbers undo the top buttons of their work shirts to display gold chains...
...demand increases, prices have gone up, and fish entrees can cost as much as meat. Monkfish, once $1 a pound, is now $3, and the price of squid has quadrupled. There is also a stronger incentive for unscrupulous restaurant owners to pass off such inexpensive varieties as red grouper, shark or pollack for red snapper, swordfish or striped bass. One of the most flagrant transgressions in recent seasons has been the substitution of inexpensive calico scallops from Florida for the more delicate variety found in the Northeast...
...currency surplus of $5 billion, mostly in drug-generated $50 and $100 bills, or more than the nation's twelve Federal Reserve banks combined. Drug money has corrupted banking, real estate, law enforcement and even the fishing industry, whose practitioners are abandoning the pursuit of snapper and grouper for the transport of bales of marijuana ("square grouper," as fishermen call it) from freighters at sea to the mainland. About one-third of the region's murders are drug-related...