I love fish. I love them in the wild, in the aquarium, and I also love them on my plate for dinner.

What I don’t love is how the fishing industries are treating the fish, and I don’t love the fact that most of us are really uninformed about how these fish live, how they’re caught, and how they get to our table. Not-so-fun fact: I just found out that unagi — freshwater eel — “the steak of the sea” as my friend Chuck calls it, and my favorite sushi fish, is hideously unsustainable. The fish are captured as babies and raised and fattened in open-net farms, thereby destroying the wild population and causing all kinds of pollution. Awful. ): This is particularly bad because eels are carnivores and must be fed protein — more than double their weight — to produce sufficient meat for us to eat. It’s not good any way you look at it, despite how delicious it is.

I want to recommend to you folks that if you eat fish (and there’s no reason why an omnivore shouldn’t — it’s tasty and good for you and full of lots of things your body needs), to please follow these links over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, and print out the appropriate Seafood Watch for your region, and the Sushi Watch if you eat sushi. Fold them up, put them in your wallet, and take them with you when you go shopping for fish, and when you go out to eat. Vote with your voice and your dollars for sustainable and safe fishes, so that we will have fish for future generations.