Fingerprinting Fish

The Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo is probably the last place you'd expect to find government researchers and highly trained scientists, but at this year's rodeo, science...not necessarily the sport...is the key attraction. Researchers with the U-S Food and Drug Administration have set up a working lab near the weight scales. F.D.A. experts are collecting D.N.A. from fish caught in the rodeo. They'll use the D.N.A. to create a national seafood rating system and database.

"You've heard all this stuff about restaurants serving Asian catfish as grouper or snapper, this will allow the F.D.A. to create a library for about 60 different species," says Dr. Bob Shipp, chair of the University of South Alabama's marine science department. "This will be used for enforcement purposes, they'll use that library to enforce, especially imports that are coming in."

"We're currently working on a new method to identify fish filets to prevent market substitute and also for food safety issues," says John Deeds with the F.D.A.

D.N.A. is collected from each fish, then labled and stored inside tiny vials. The D.N.A. information will then be entered in a national computer database generated from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.