Charges dropped against Gulfarium

The state attorney’s office has dropped four misdemeanor charges against Florida’s Gulfarium on Okaloosa Island.

      It did so against the wishes of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, according to officials with the agency.

      “One of two things occurred,” said commission Lt. Doug Berrymore. “Either the state attorney’s office misunderstood our position, which I doubt, or they acted unilaterally.”

      The FWC charged the Gulfarium in August with four counts of violating the terms of the special activities license it uses to purchase fish for display at the park, Berrymore said.

      The license allows Gulfarium to hire people to catch legal fish for display. The vendor is paid for the service, as opposed to for the fish, Berrymore said.

      “What Gulfarium was doing was purchasing individual fish, paying X number of dollars for a grouper or snapper or triggerfish. In that case, that man (the vendor) would be acting as a commercial fisherman,” Berrymore said.

      State officers did agree that charges against the vendor who sold the fish to the Gulfarium should be dropped, Berrymore said.

      “The violations were not on his part, they were on the part of Gulfarium,” he said. “It was Gulfarium’s fault.”

      Assistant State Attorney Ginger Madden was assigned to prosecute the case. After a couple of hearings to discuss a settling the charges, it was dismissed April 28.

      Attorney Drew Pinkerton, who represented the Gulfarium, said he was unaware that the charges had been dropped until Tuesday.

Madden could not be reached by phone Tuesday and was out of the office Wednesday.

      Bill Bishop, who is in charge of Okaloosa County’s state attorney’s office, said file notes indicate an agreement to drop charges was reached with the FWC.

      “The real question was proving any kind of criminal intent,” Bishop said.

      Pinkerton termed the case against the Gulfarium “much ado about nothing.”

      But FWC officials have confirmed that the allegations they brought were serious enough that a conviction could have cost the Gulfarium the state license that allows it to display animals such as alligators and river otters.

      Agency spokesman Stan Kirkland said FWC investigators who worked on the case were “deeply disappointed” by the outcome.

      He said one officer said he’d even heard “negative comments made by people in the state’s attorney’s office” about the case.

      “We just wanted to make sure they (Gulfarium officials) were complying with the law,” Kirkland said.