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Courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium

I’m reading a new green cookbook/diet book about how to “weigh less and waste less” (more on that, once I finish it), and the author makes the point that we make hundreds of small decisions about what to eat every day that effect the planet. 
For example, should you eat tuna or swordfish? At dinner last night a friend said she stays away from the larger fish because they tend to accumulate mercury.  Frankly, I had never thought about that, I was just focusing on fishing methods!
I quickly realized that virtually every online reference for seafood cites the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch® pocket guide as the best resource for information on which fish to eat or avoid for healthy oceans. 
According to the aquarium’s website, nearly 75 percent of the world's fisheries are fished to capacity or overfished.  As consumers, the choices we make can worsen or improve this outlook. Seafood Watch began in 2000 as part of the aquarium’s mission to inspire stewardship of the oceans. The recommendations consider the fishery, habitat, species, management and a host of other factors that affect each species. Seafood Watch recommendations are science-based, peer reviewed, and use ecosystem-based criteria. Since the program began in 1999, they have distributed tens of millions of pocket guides. There are over 200 restaurant and business partners across North America, including the two largest food-service companies in the U.S. that support the program. Information, including recipes developed by celebrity chefs to help you prepare the seafood recommended by the guide, is available online at their website, as downloadable pdf files or you can get their iPhone application (over 70,000 downloads and counting), so you can take the information with you where ever you are eating or shopping.