All tales of redemption begin with sin.

As I sat at my favorite seafood restaurant, La Dorada in Coral Gables, preparing to eat a chunk of monkfish, I thought of the opening passage of Taras Grescoe's Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (Bloomsbury, 2008)).

Grescoe describes the way monkfish is caught -- a technology that rakes the deep-ocean bottom, destroying all manner of habitat in the process. It has been compared with ''using a bulldozer to catch songbirds for food,'' he writes.

To be fair, I have feasted at La Dorada on grilled sardines, the most sustainable of fish, and could order centollo (land crab) or razor clams, which get passing grades from marine watchdog organizations.

Still, my conscience was piqued. The way the oceans are being ravaged, Grescoe writes, they eventually will sustain nothing but jellyfish.

We have overfished some species to or near extinction. Cod, once a huge fish that fed whole societies, is small and relatively scarce today, the victim of a thousand-year ''fishing binge,'' as Mark Kurlansky puts it in Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (Penguin, 1998).

Fish farming may seem like the answer, but it creates problems of its own. Salmon, for example, are carnivorous, so stocks of wild fish are depleted to feed them. Shrimp farming, especially in developing countries, is notoriously polluting.

As I was drawn to the ecologists' arguments, I faced a quandary. I knew farm-raised salmon, imported shrimp and monkfish weren't conscionable choices, but how about branzino, grouper, stone crab?

I could consult sustainable-seafood guides. (Stone crabs are cool.) Or, as Grescoe insists, I could ask the source when ordering fish at restaurants. Locally, servers at Oceanaire provide that information unprompted, but at most places, they don't know.

And then there are restaurants where sustainable seafood is the only option. That's been the case for the past three years at Chef Allen's in Aventura, the result of a fortuitous identity crisis for chef-owner Allen Susser.

''Who am I?'' Susser says he asked himself after 22 years as a leading South Florida chef. ''What I love is fish,'' he concluded, ``so let's focus on the seafood and go for the greening idea.''

He set out to educate himself, his staff and customers. And to encourage local fishermen to catch the fish he wanted.

One of his suppliers is Two Bills Seafood, a sustainability-minded wholesale and retail operation in Dania Beach. Capt. Mark Silverstein, a lifelong South Florida fisherman who delivers Two Bills product to Susser, has seen it all.

''When I was young, there were no laws,'' says Silverstein, 52. ``Fishermen will tell you there's plenty of fish out there, but there is less every day.''

Susser has more than doubled his seafood offerings with dishes like mahi-mahi poached in red wine and paella made with Bahamian lobster, and his customers have responded.

''Now that I do more fish, I sell more fish,'' he says.

''Chefs are thought leaders in the industry; they have an influence beyond their own restaurants,'' says Ken Peterson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch, which honored Susser and Michy's Michelle Bernstein as ''chef ambassadors'' for their promotion of sustainable seafood.

Seafood Watch publishes pocket guides for consumers (see box). Of greater impact, it has gotten big food-service companies like Aramark to use more sustainable seafood.

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