Take a cup of water from any river, lake, or oceanside beach and environmental DNA fingerprinting can reveal which species of fish were recently swimming there. It used to take a lab a month or more to get those results, but now a new tool can identify a specific species in three days or less. That could be a gamechanger for science.

“If you took a water sample from New York Harbor on Tuesday morning, by the end of day Thursday you’ll know whether winter flounder are back,” said Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University in New York City.

New York Harbor restricts dredging if winter flounder are present.

Not only is the “Go Fish