Encyclopedia Brown And The Case Of The Mislabeled Sushi

Taken with mercury fears, it could mean the end of sushi. Will pork belly be next? Time will tell:

Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-tech sleuths.

In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting.

They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.

What may be most impressive about the experiment is the ease with which the students accomplished it. Although the testing technique is at the forefront of research, the fact that anyone can take advantage of it by sending samples off to a laboratory meant the kind of investigative tools once restricted to Ph.D.’s and crime labs can move into the hands of curious diners and amateur scientists everywhere.

The project began, appropriately, over dinner about a year ago. Ms. Stoeckle’s father, Mark, is a scientist and early proponent of the use of DNA bar coding, a technique that greatly simplifies the process of identifying species. Instead of sequencing the entire genome, bar coders — who have been developing their field only since 2003 — examine a single gene. Dr. Stoeckle’s specialty is birds, and he admits that he tends to talk shop at the dinner table.

One evening at a sushi restaurant, Ms. Stoeckle recalled asking her father, “Could you bar code sushi?”

Dr. Stoeckle replied, “Yeah, I think you could — and if you did that, I think you’d be the first ones.”

Ms. Stoeckle, who is now 19, was intrigued. She enlisted Ms. Strauss, who is now 18.

Their field technique was simple, Ms. Stoeckle said. “We ate a lot of sushi.”

Or, as Dr. Stoeckle put it, “It involved shopping and eating, in which they were already fluent.”

They hit 4 restaurants and 10 grocery stores in Manhattan. Once the samples were home, whether in doggie bags or shopping bags, they cut away a small piece and preserved it in alcohol. They sent those off to the University of Guelph in Ontario, where the Barcode of Life Database project began. A graduate student there, Eugene Wong, works on the Fish Barcode of Life (dubbed, inevitably, Fish-BOL) and agreed to do the genetic analysis. He compared the teenagers’ samples with the global library of 30,562 bar codes representing nearly 5,500 fish species. (Commercial labs will also perform the analysis for a fee.)

Three hundred dollars’ worth of meals later, the young researchers had their data back from Guelph: 2 of the 4 restaurants and 6 of the 10 grocery stores had sold mislabeled fish.

Even If They Had Toilet Paper . . .

. . . I’m pretty sure people would avoid them:

A survey of subway toilets found that nearly all the loos in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan stations were either locked or so poorly stocked and maintained that they were virtually unusable.

The review — by Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind — of 18 restrooms in three boroughs found 10 were locked and four of the open restrooms lacked toilet paper.

Only two, on Roosevelt Island and the Church Avenue F train station, were stocked and open — but the latter was being used by transit workers in an area inaccessible to straphangers, according to Hikind’s report.

. . .

But given the conditions of some bathrooms, riders may want to keep their distance. An assessor actually walked in on “two men engaged in sexual activity” during one bathroom evaluation, the report said.

Admit It: History Sucks; Time To Pave Over That Narsty Cobblestone

The bad old days return to the South Street Seaport:

A mystery odor wafting through the seaport’s residential neighborhood for the past few weeks has restaurants reeling, homeowners gagging and tourists left holding their noses.

“It’s disgusting — like rotten fish left out on a sidewalk for a year,” said Venanzio Pasubio, 33, owner of ll Brigante, a restaurant on Front Street.

With the Fulton Fish Market long gone, theories abound on the origin of the odor. Some think it’s illegal dumping; others point fingers at the Waterfalls art project; one person insists that it’s the preserved corpses on display at “Bodies, the Exhibition” nearby.

. . .

Locals describe the smell as “dead rat,” “stinky cheese” and “raw sewage.”

“We’re supposed to be up and coming and trendy,” said resident Ellen Murphy. “Now we just smell like fish.”

The Post brought in smell scientist Dr. Avery Gilbert, author of “What the Nose Knows,” to investigate.

“Yes that is fish,” he said about the elusive smell. “But it’s also yeasty, like bread.”

He said the culprit is most likely “amines,” which is the fish-like smell of “proteins breaking down.”

Location Scout: South Street Seaport.

Maybe You Wonder Why Council Members Even Have Discretionary Funds?

As a matter of fact, I do:

A Bronx City Councilwoman earmarked thousands of taxpayer dollars for a tenants association in her former apartment building — an association residents say doesn’t exist.

Councilwoman Maria Baez, a Democrat representing the Fordham and Kingsbridge sections, allocated $7,500 of her Fiscal Year 2008 discretionary funds to the 2401 Davidson Avenue Tenants Association, a group supposedly located in the six-story building she called home until 2005.

The building is also the registered headquarters for her campaign committee, “Friends of Maria Baez,” and home to her campaign treasurer, Nilda Velazquez, who lives in Baez’s former apartment.

But the building’s superintendent and more than a dozen residents interviewed at the 60-unit building said there is no tenants association.

“There’s no association here,” said Elias Guerra, the super.

The regular postal carrier said she couldn’t remember ever delivering a piece of mail to any tenants organization in the building.

Some residents remembered a now-disbanded organization — which last met four years ago.

“We don’t have one anymore,” said Vicky Reyes, listed as the treasurer of the defunct tenants group on an old flier. She said Baez was a member when she lived there.

Reyes said the association dissolved after the former president left several years ago, and hadn’t been active for about four years. She wasn’t aware of anyone trying to revive it.

Velazquez declined comment through family members.

Staffers at Baez’s Bronx district office told a Post reporter, “You’re not welcome here.”

Baez accused The Post of harassing her staff members, and said she only allowed constituent business to be conducted in her office.

She declined to answer specific questions about the tenants group.

“I will not allow anyone to assassinate my character as a Latina woman,” she said.

She added that the organizations she funds are “good organizations” that “provide important services for the community.”

Before the $7,500 could be paid to the tenants association, the council yanked the funding during the vetting process, council spokeswoman Maria Alvarado told the Post. She would not say when or why the funding was nixed.

Earlier: Budget Cuts Run Deep; Administration Even Asks City Council Members To Curtail Funding Of Phantom Community Groups.

Showered In Mystery

Crazed ex? Pissed off creditor? No one knows:

Residents of a block in Boerum Hill have known for months that rogue urinators were defiling their street, but they never had the proof to convince local police of a scatological conspiracy on Dean Street — until now.

A two-liter container of human urine, complete with syringes bobbing in the waste, was found Sunday morning between Bond and Nevins streets — and the repulsive find was finally enough to prove to cops that residents were being tormented by micturating hellions and not merely dogs with overactive bladders.

“It’s absolutely gross,” said Joseph Samulski, who had the misfortune of finding the container on his front steps. “I don’t even know how you could accumulate that much urine.”

But on the brighter side, “It was the first time we were able to establish what we’ve been saying on our block — that someone has been pouring urine on cars.”

. . .

The pissing match broke out on the day of the block party last September, when several people emerged from their homes near the Nevins Street end of the block to encounter an overpowering stench of liquid waste on the street and in one man’s pickup truck.

Since then, that pickup truck has been showered at least two other times.

“Thankfully, whenever it happened, my truck needed a good washing anyway,” said good sport Kevin McGowan.