But according to food critic Michael Bauer the guide still doesn’t measure up to Seafood Watch and misses a lot of restaurants – some of which deserve a lotta stars.

It doesn’t help me to decide whether Water Bar is a good Dine About Town option, for example.

• Its menu details where and how fish is caught, which I would think would give it an easy 2.5 stars: Thumbs up.
• It serves wild sea bass, which according to Seafood Watch is now out of ‘overfished’ status: Thumbs up.
• But though the menu provides locations for where fish came from, it’s still hard to decipher. Its prawns from the Gulf of Mexico are not labeled as farmed or wild: Thumbs down.

Guess I’ll have to email the restaurant itself or ask the folks at the Monterey Aquarium until the Fish2fork guide becomes more comprehensive.

Making sushi is fun if you get a few friends together and get well-organized. It’s important to rinse rice beforehand, moisten with seasoned rice vinegar once cooked, and keep tightly covered until ready to roll. You can use white or brown rice. We also experimented with black rice and it turned out great.

For fillings, pick from steamed asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, raw avocado, cucumber, bell peppers, baked tofu, fried tempeh, and even mango.

I hope this provides some inspiration for skipping out on endangered fish and gettin’ your sushi groove on!

But when I google seafood or sushi, I mostly come up with articles about its health benefits. Sure, fish is a great source of protein and light in calories, but its mercury content and environmental cost needs to be taken into account.

As far as my fish intake, I’ve limited my consumption to wild salmon if available and ahi tuna as a once or twice-a-month occasion. But lately I am questioning just how much of either I should even allow myself to eat.

I’m sure I won’t want to eat either after I watch End of the Line, premiering near me July 10th. It’s supposed to be the first film on the seafood industry, showing how overfishing is devastating our oceans. Based on the book by Charles Clover, it covers what’s happening in the heavily fished areas of the world, and calls for increased marine monitoring of our oceans.

What’s interesting to me is that neither Seafood Watch or End of the Line make any mention of a complete boycott of seafood consumption. I agree that enforcing stricter fishing laws is what needs to happen, but what about promoting a boycott from eating seafood altogether? What if we all took a break from eating spicy tuna rolls and freshwater eel for a few years?

I think a shift towards adopting a plant-based diet is essential if we’re going to save our oceans. Just reducing our fish intake or eating from the more abundant species is a good way to make the transition.