San Francisco Restaurant Nets Greener Seafood

SAN FRANCISCO — Neptune’s on Pier 39 might be the first seafood restaurant in the tourist magnet to flaunt a 100 percent sustainable menu.

In a metropolis nationally recognized for its “green” practices, hundreds of restaurant menus have for years offered organic beef or chicken and several other natural food options. However, since sustainable seafood menus must take into consideration so many other variables — the variety of fish, how it’s caught, where it’s from — the restaurants that dominate the Fisherman’s Wharf have to play catch-up to compete in the sustainable game.

“[Fish] just aren’t as cuddly,” said Carrie Chen, director of the Aquarium of the Bay, who teaches restaurants how to shrink their carbon footprint. “You know, dolphins have that charismatic character … everyone knows about dolphin-safe tuna now.”

But Chen said if restaurants keep buying from big-name companies that catch their prey with nets instead of the traditional fish-line and hook, foreign diseases eventually spread to local water and in 40 years the fish could be wiped out

To read the rest of the story, please go to: San Francisco Examiner.