Getting almost double length when reading bytes [] from postgres with jpa

I have an Image class that has a byte [] to contain the actual image data. I can upload and paste the image just fine in my webapp. When I try to display an image after reading it from JPA, the length of my byte [] is always 2x-1 or 2x-2, where x is the length of the bytea field in postgres 9. Obviously, the image that it ruined will not be displayed by the browser. I could use some help figuring out why I get what I expect twice. Here is a mapping of my image class. Using eclipselink with JPA 2 hitting postgres 9 on mac.

When I select from a database with

select *, length(bytes) from image;

I get a length of 9765. At the breakpoint in my controller, the byte length [] is 19529, which is one byte, which is half the size of the database.

@Entity
@Table( name = "image" )
@SequenceGenerator( name = "IMAGE_SEQ_GEN", sequenceName = "IMAGE_SEQUENCE" )
public class Image
        extends DataObjectAbstract<Long>
{
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue( strategy = GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator = "IMAGE_SEQ_GEN" )
    private Long key;

    @Column( name="content_type" )
    private String contentType;

    @Lob
    @Basic( optional=false )
    @Column( name="bytes" )
    private byte[] bytes;

    // constructor and getters and setters

}

pgadmin shows me the following for an image table

CREATE TABLE image
(
  "key" bigint NOT NULL,
  bytes bytea,
  content_type character varying(255),
  "version" integer,
  CONSTRAINT image_pkey PRIMARY KEY (key)
)
WITH (
  OIDS=FALSE
);