mangroves

Mangroves are like miniature forests that grow in the shallow salt marshes around the islands.
Some grow in smaller clumps like in this picture and others, like in the next picture, sprawl over acres.

Looks like a farmer's field that you could walk across but, you can't. While mangroves are a great place for birds to roost on the tops, down below live all manner of fish, crabs and alligators.

I've heard a couple of versions of a story from Key West's "bad old days". . .
About thirty years ago, a drug smuggler named Bum Farto,
(no kidding), got caught by the cops and agreed to rat out a few of his gangster friends to keep himself out of prison. But just before the trial, he disappeared and has never been seen or
heard from since. . .

. . .One version of the story says he grabbed the money, changed his name and moved to South America somewhere. Another version says his gangster friends caught up with him, did him in and at low tide one dark night, tied his body to the roots of a mangrove patch. So, when the tide came back in, so did all those hungry critters and, as quick as you can say "bon appétit", there went the evidence.