Two high school seniors in New York City caused a stir this summer when the results of their science project revealed that one-fourth of the sushi they purchased was mislabeled. The students purchased samples of sushi from four restaurants and ten grocery stores in Manhattan and shipped the samples to the University of Guelph in Ontario, where a graduate student had agreed to do the genetic analysis. Comparing the samples with DNA information stored in the Fish Barcode of Life (http://www.fishbol.org/), the graduate student determined that two restaurants and six grocery stores had sold mislabeled fish. For example, seven of nine samples sold as red snapper were mislabeled. One sample was actually Atlantic cod. (New York Times, Aug. 21, 2008).

The Australia High Court, the country’s highest judicial body, recently issued a landmark ruling granting traditional owners, i.e. the Aborigines, the right to exclude people from using the foreshore (the area between low and high tide) without permission. The ruling only directly affects fishermen on beaches and tidal rivers in Australia’s Northern Territory, the area at issue in the case, but could provide precedent for Aboriginal claims in other parts of the country. A spokesman for the traditional owners indicated that they would seek to develop a permit system for uses in the area. (Associated Press, July 30, 2008).

Google recently filed a patent for a “wave-based data center” and a “crane-removable module,” a container-based data center. As if the regulatory regime for offshore alternative energy is not confusing enough, it appears companies are now trying to figure out how to move their data centers offshore and power them by wave energy. Note to the Mineral Management Service: Brush up on your intellectual property law. (environmentalleader.com, Sept. 9, 2008).

In another interesting legal development from Australia, the New South Wales Court of Appeals overturned a decision of the Land and Environment Court last November that would have legally bound planning departments to consider the risk of climate change-induced flooding when approving coastal developments. The Court of Appeals declined to void the Planning Minister’s decision even though there was no evidence that he considered the increased risk of flooding due to climate change. The plaintiffs had argued that the departments could not determine whether the developments met the principles of ecologically sustainable development without considering this increased risk. (The Canberra Times, Sept. 25, 2008).