In an attempt to catalogue all life forms in DNA terms, the Consortium for the Barcoding of Life (CBOL; http://www.barcoding.si.edu/) was established. This initiative is focused on sequencing the mt COI gene in all biological species. The sector of the project focused on fish species identification is FISH-BOL (http://www.fishbol.org/), which has established barcodes for a growing number of marine and freshwater species (currently over 4500). Although data from this project may prove useful in species detection for prevention of commercial fraud, there is currently less information on COI than on the molecular marker mt cyt b, which is supported by more sequence data from a greater number of species (Dawnay and others 2007). Moreover, a literature search for species identification studies using the combined databases Academic Search Premier and Agricola resulted in 288 hits with the search terms “species identification and cytochrome b or cyt b gene” and only 142 hits using the search terms “species identification and cytochrome c oxidase subunit I or COI gene.” Standardizing the identification approach to be limited to COI could potentially be a major source of controversy, as it has become in the field of taxonomy (DeSalle and others 2005). On the other hand, the compilation of sequence information for a specific gene in all species could greatly improve genetic identification techniques and provide a focused effort for fraud prevention. To this effect, USFDA researchers have recently been investigating the possibility of incorporating DNA COI barcodes in the Regulatory Fish Encyclopedia (RFE) (Yancy and others 2008).