Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings July 2017 - 388

RECORD STORMS IN THE USA
The ﬁrst 3 months of 2017 produced 5 storms, each causing
>$1 billion in damage (31)! That's the highest tally on record
for a 3-month period, twice the average of 2.4 such disasters
since data started being collected in 1980. These 3 months of
2017 also produced 486 tornados-almost double the average
of 252 in the last 30+ years.
EMPTYING THE OCEANS
At one time the oceans teemed with mackerel, squid, and
sardines, but now ﬁsherman lament as they reel in their nearly
empty nets (32). Fishing is depleting oceans across the globe,
with 90% of the world's ﬁsheries fully exploited or facing collapse, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization. From Russian king crab ﬁshermen in the West
Bering Sea to Mexican ships that poach red snapper oﬀ the
coast of Florida, unsustainable ﬁshing practices threaten the
well-being of millions of people in the developing world who
depend on the sea for income and food.
China, in particular, is having an outsized eﬀect. Its enormous
population, growing wealth to buy seafood, and world's largest ﬂeet
of deep sea vessels is a major problem. Having depleted the seas
close to home, Chinese ﬁshermen are now exploiting the waters of
other countries, their journeys often subsidized by a government
more concerned with domestic unemployment and food security
than the health of the world's oceans and the countries that depend
on them. Increasingly, China's growing armada of distant-water
ﬁshing vessels is heading to the waters of West Africa, drawn by
corruption and weak enforcement by local governments. West
Africa now appears to provide the vast majority of the ﬁsh caught
by Chinese distant-water ﬂeets. By some estimates, as many as
two-thirds of those boats engage in ﬁshing that contravenes international or national laws. China's distant-water ﬁshing ﬂeet has
grown to nearly 2600 vessels. In contrast, the USA has fewer than
one-tenth as many. Chinese ships are so large that they can scoop
up as many ﬁsh in a week as the Senegalese in a year, costing West
African countries $2 billion per year, according to a recent study.
Many of the Chinese boat owners rely on government money
to build vessels and fuel their journeys to Senegal, a month-long
trip from China. Overall, government subsidies to the ﬁshing
industry reached nearly $22 billion between 2011 and 2015,
nearly triple the amount spent during the previous 4 years.
These ﬁgures do not include the tens of millions in subsidies
and tax breaks that coastal Chinese cities and provinces provide
to support local ﬁshing companies. Without these subsidies, the
Chinese ﬂeets would not be sustainable. For Senegal and other
countries of West Africa, the ﬁshing stocks are plummeting.
Local ﬁsherman working out of hand-hewn canoes compete
with mega-trawlers whose mile-long nets sweep up every living
thing. Most of the ﬁsh the Chinese catch is sent abroad, with
much of it ending up as ﬁshmeal fodder for chickens and pigs
in the US and other countries.
Chinese ﬁshermen's press into other countries' waters has
resulted in numerous maritime disputes. Indonesia, for example,
has impounded a number of Chinese boats caught poaching
in its waters. Argentina sank a Chinese vessel that tried to ram
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a Coast Guard boat. Violent clashes have occurred between
Chinese ﬁshermen and South Korean authorities. Greed is not
a compliment to a country trying to be a world power.
GIANT TORTOISES ON THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS
When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands in
1839, the sailors on his ship killed several giant tortoises, which
at the time were in abundance (33). Darwin wrote in his diary
that about 200,000 of the slow-moving tortoises had been killed
and carried away from the islands by buccaneers and whalers
in previous centuries. The result was that the giant tortoise
numbers dropped enormously. In recent times, the giant tortoises on this Ecuadorean province have faced extinction. To
increase their numbers, a visiting scientist located a male giant
tortoise on one of the Galapagos Islands and brought him to the
awaiting female tortoises in an attempt to increase their numbers. But lo and behold, "Lonesome George," as they named
him, shunned the females with whom he shared a pen. Then,
the local scientists brought in another giant tortoise in 1977
from the San Diego Zoo and named him "Diego." He turned
out to be the opposite of George and subsequently fathered
hundreds of progeny, estimated to be 350 to 800. Whatever
the number, Diego proved to be welcome news for his species,
which had fallen to barely more than a dozen by the 1970s,
nearly all females. Tortoises typically live more than 100 years.
HUNDRETH ANNIVERSARY OF US INVOLVEMENT IN WORLD WAR I
World War I started in July 1914 and ended in November
1918 (52 months). Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, the
Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), Montenegro, Portugal, and
Serbia fought Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, and
the USA. Approximately 15 million soldiers and civilians died in
that war (34). When the US entered World War I in April 1917,
Germany had long fought on two fronts: against Russia in the
East and against France and Belgium in the West. When Russia
signed the peace treaty with Germany in 1918, Germany pulled
troops from the East and moved them to the western front. But
then 2.1 million US troops had arrived in Europe. In the fall of
1918, the Meuse-Argonne oﬀensive was the biggest and bloodiest of the American Expeditionary Force. It involved 1.2 million
American soldiers and lasted 47 days, with a loss of >26,000
Americans. At this huge cost, the Americans drove the Germans
back toward Germany and on November 11, the armistice ended
the ﬁghting. It was a disastrous war that 21 years later led to
World War II, where >50 million lives were lost. And today, the
Germans are one of our best friends, and Russia, maybe not so.
MIDNIGHT ASSASSIN IN AUSTIN AND JACK THE RIPPER IN
LONDON
Skip Hollandsworth, a journalist, screenwriter, and executive
editor of Texas Monthly magazine, has written a splendid book
entitled The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt
for America's First Serial Killer (35). The murders occurred in
1884 to 1885 in Austin, Texas, then a city of 17,000, in an area
of 4 square miles with 12 policeman, 18 churches, and about
100 saloons. The state capital was being built. The ﬁrst murder

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