new york times

Now here's an eye-opener for you. Two sushi-loving high school girls in New York took on a freelance science project to check 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting (or "barcoding") technique to see whether their fish was correctly labeled.

The result? Two of the 4 restaurants and 6 of the 10 grocery stores sold mislabeled fish. Yes, it's a small sample size, but still, yikes!

We watched last night as our favorite backstroker-slash-ocean lover, Aaron Peirsol, won his fourth Olympic gold medal and set a world record of 52.54 seconds in the 100-meter backstroke, which made him the first man since Roland Matthes of East Germany in 1968 and 1972 to win back-to-back 100 backstroke titles at the Games, according to the New York Times' report.

It was an exciting race. The first 50 meters saw Aaron lagging behind in lane two, but after his flip and a fierce kick off the wall, he surged ahead. The commentators roared.

It appears that jellyfish have invaded not just the oceans but the media, too.

Last week I told you about our marine scientist Margot Stiles' cameo on the CBS Early Show to talk about the jellyfish invasion. They aired a longer version of the story Sunday evening -- check it out. They included quite a bit of footage from our European office of jellyfish and our roving catamaran, the Ranger.