First Online Seafood Restaurant Guide Launches in U.S.
Fish2Fork Reveals Worst Offenders, Lauds Best Stewarts of Oceans and
Marine Life, and Makes Surprising Discovery about Sushi Restaurants

Monday, Jan. 18, 2010 – Fish2Fork, the first online seafood restaurant guide of its kind to launch in the United States, went live today with the ratings of 50 restaurants in 14 states. The interactive guide aims to rate restaurants not just on the usual criteria of how their seafood tastes, but more importantly, on what impact its capture has on our oceans and marine life.

Fish2fork’s editor Charles Clover revealed in his book on which The End of the Line film was based, that as many as 80 percent of the world's fish stocks are fully or over-exploited and some fish species, such as the bluefin tuna or the beluga sturgeon, are now listed as critically endangered.

“Fish2Fork’s aim is not to persuade people to stop eating fish,” said Clover. “Quite the contrary – we want everyone to continue enjoying seafood, but the cavalier attitude to our oceans and the seafood they contain has to change if the appalling prospect of a world without many existing species of fish is to be avoided. By making the right choices about the fish they eat, diners have a powerful economic weapon they can use in bringing about that all-important change.”

Fish2fork.com helps diners make informed decisions before they visit a seafood restaurant and recognize those restaurants that strive to serve the most sustainable fish and which serve mostly fish to avoid.

The Fish2Fork survey found that sushi restaurants are the worst offenders for serving up fish that are under threat in the wild. Seven out of the worst 10 eateries assessed are sushi restaurants. Bar Masa - junior sister to Masa, one of the most exclusive and expensive restaurants in New York - was judged to be the worst offender. Another restaurant in the city,

15 East, fared almost as badly. Both restaurants were given 5 Red Fish ratings. Other sushi restaurants featured in the bottom 10 include: Yellowtail and Sushi Roku in Las Vegas; The Hump and Mori Sushi in Los Angeles as well as Uchi in Austin, Texas.

Ironically the restaurant that topped the survey also serves sushi - demonstrating that sustainability and sushi are not incompatible. Bamboo Sushi in Portland received a 4.5 Blue Fish rating for putting sustainability at the heart of its menu by ensuring all its fish and seafood come from stocks which are not threatened. Another sushi restaurant, Tataki in San Francisco, also scores highly, gaining three Blue Fish.

Three traditional seafood restaurants, including the two Michelin Star Aqua in San Francisco, were also given a 5 Red Fish rating. The other two were McCormick and Schmick's in Boston and the Atlanta Fish Market.

Three restaurants put in an outstanding performance to receive a 4 Blue Fish score: Blue Ridge in DC, Sea Rocket Bistro in San Diego and Ray's Boathouse in Seattle. In all, 22 restaurants of the 50 assessed - 44 percent - picked up a Red Fish rating from 0.5 to 5.

A total of eight restaurants - 16 percent - got 3 Blue Fish or higher and more than half - 28 (56 percent) - got a Blue Fish rating of 0.5 to 4.5.

All the restaurants are judged primarily on the information they provide about their seafood online. The restaurants that display their sustainability credentials and give the most information about their seafood score highest; provided they are not serving fish from overfished stocks. Those that provide the least information and serve fish from overfished stocks score poorly.

Visitors to the site will find information about seafood restaurants across the U.S. and will be encouraged to ask questions about the fish they are offered when they dine out. They can then easily upload their own view of the restaurant's commitment to sustainability onto the Web site and help give it a simple rating score – blue fish for good and red fish for bad – on a sliding scale.

The Web site uses the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch's list of species to avoid to benchmark the menus of more than 150 restaurants, a third of which have been rated so far. Each restaurant was contacted and asked to complete a questionnaire so that a rating could be given. The questions were designed to assess a restaurant's sourcing policy, for instance, whether it offered wild or farmed fish, whether it adhered to Seafood Watch, or whether it offered species of fish which were either endangered or under threat because of over-fishing. Where a restaurant declined or was unable to complete the questionnaire it was filled in by fish2fork.com staff using its online menu and Web site as a source of information.

"Some restaurants still have not grasped that sustainability has become part of the definition of good food. You don't want to eat a wonderful meal and have nightmares about the species you have pushed a little further towards extinction,” said Clover. "This new guide shows the wonderful work some chefs and proprietors are doing with fishermen to make sure that they source fish of the highest quality caught in the most selective ways. It also shows the awful dark side of gastronomy: chefs who charge their customers the Earth for an ephemeral meal that they prioritize above the survival of whole species and ecosystems.”

Fish2fork.com, run by the same people who produced the documentary film The End of the Line, about global over-fishing, has reviewed and rated 50 restaurants initially to coincide with 14 Fish n’ Flicks screenings of the film in restaurants which started this week on the East and West coasts. The website is relying on diners to help it become an authoritative reference guide. For more information go to www.fish2om