Last year, Boston food blogger Jacqueline Church (aka the Leather District Gourmet) decided to collect recipes and tips on eating sustainable seafood. “It's easy to be confused or disheartened when we hear all the bad news about fish populations threatened with extinction, closed salmon runs, unhealthy aquaculture,” she says. So Church decided to “light a candle rather than curse the darkness.”

And so she began her "Teach a Man to Fish" project, which aims to arm consumers with the knowledge to change the way they shop for fish, as well as to influence their local markets and restaurants to do the same. She first approached the Monterey Bay Aquarium, on whose Seafood Watch guides many U.S. gourmets, environmentalists and chefs rely, to support her project. (You can download your own guide here.) Word spread about her efforts via the aquarium's newsletter and other bloggers, and she was able to compile over two dozen recipes and stories from writers from all over the U.S. and the world, including recipes from DC chef and sustainability advocate Barton Seaver and Napa Valley's Peter Pahk. (See the 2007 wrapup here.)

Church says that sifting through and compiling the best recipes was a grueling round-the-clock process (“this year I’m thinking of asking for donations of coffee”), but that she’s looking forward to doing it again. For this round, Las Vegas chef Rick Moonen (author of Fish Without a Doubt), currymaster Raghavan Iyer and SF chef Stuart Brioza will participate, along with another class of food bloggers, including the well-known French food blogger Clotilde Dusoulier of Chocolate & Zuccini, who’s been spreading the word about Church’s efforts across the blogosphere.

To submit your recipe, follow these steps:

1) Prepare a recipe using sustainable seafood by Oct. 22.
2) Send it along with a photo (200 x 200 pixels) in an email to the Leather District Gourmet at LDgourmet [at] gmail [dot] com. Subject line should read: "Teach a Man to Fish".
3) Include your blog or website URL, your name and your country.
4) Include the reason why sustainable seafood is important to you or what you're learning about it.

If you're not sure where to start, you can consult these sustainable seafood guides:

- Chefs Collaborative offers a downloadable guide to sourcing sustainable seafood.

- The Environmental Defense Fund has an easy to understand "best/worst" seafood chart and pocket guides. (There's even a mobile phone version.)

- The Marine Stewardship Council maintains a "where to buy" database of MSC-certified sustainable seafood purveyors in the U.S.

Photo credit: Paul Keleher, via Flickr