DURHAM, N.C. -- The colorful restaurant menus that thousands of tourists bring home as souvenirs from Hawaii hold more than happy memories of island vacations.
They also contain valuable data that are helping a trio of researchers track long-term changes to important fisheries in the Aloha State.
The scientists are using the menus as part of a larger project to fill a 45-year gap in official records of wild fish populations in Hawaii's ocean waters during the mid-20th century.