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Taras Grescoe has toured the globe in search of the perfect seafood meal. His conclusion? Grilled sardines.

The Montreal-based author fell in love with the humble sardine after a round-the-world trip sampling everything from whale sashimi in Tokyo to fried oysters from Chesapeake Bay in an effort to learn about the ethics and sustainability of the seafood industry.

The results, chronicled in his book Bottomfeeder, to be released Saturday, will make many fish lovers think twice before ordering favourites such as ahi rolls, popcorn shrimp or salmon teriyaki.

Which is why he is sitting at a Portuguese grillerie on Boulevard St-Laurent staring at plates of barbecued sardines and calamari with the dreamy look of a food lover who knows he is about to tango with his current crush.

"Beautiful," he says. "Don't you think?"

Lunching on sardines and calamari is the way we ought to be eating, says Mr. Grescoe. At the core of his book is the notion that humans would be healthier and fish stocks in better shape if we ate more oceanic bottom-feeders - small fish and crustaceans such as sardines, anchovies, mackerel, squid and octopus - whose stocks are thriving in the absence of their overfished predators, big fish such as tuna, cod and sharks.

"I'm not a food fascist," he says. "I'm not trying to ruin someone's meal."

Instead, Mr. Grescoe hopes his book will open people's minds to the sort of eats usually dismissed because they arrive on dinner plates with heads and tentacles.

When his sardines arrive, Mr. Grescoe easily removes the heads and tails by notching into the fish with his knife, splitting and folding over the top of the filet to lift out the feathery backbone.

The flesh, mixed with bit of charred skin, tastes pleasantly smoky and salty. He uses the Japanese word umami, said to describe the fifth taste, associated with mushrooms and nuts.

"Small fish are actually quite tasty," says Mr. Grescoe, who recently whipped up a dinner of poached Spanish mackerel with a sauce of clarified butter and sherry vinegar.

Koreans eat salted jellyfish in mustard and garlic sauce; Northern Europeans adore herring in cream; and the Portuguese can make just about anything little taste good by dousing it in olive oil and grilling.

North Americans, by contrast, "like big pieces of easily eaten protein at the centre of the plate."

Mr. Grescoe is also a big fan of canned fish, which he buys imported from Europe at specialty grocery stores. The cans identify the boat that caught the fish so consumers can look up the vessel's record, and the fish is labelled sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, an independent fishery certifier.

And though Mr. Grescoe's usual weeknight dinners - anchovies on buttered toast with scrambled eggs - might elicit a smirk from harried North American mothers attempting to plan kid-friendly suppers, he insists that anchovy filets canned in olive oil are plain enough for even the fussiest eaters. (The oily fish are also high in omega-3 fatty acids, which are said to promote brain development, especially among children.)

Bottomfeeder details how humans have overfished and overeaten at the top of the oceanic food chain, reducing predator species such as tuna, grouper, cod, shark and swordfish to 10 per cent of their historic levels throughout most of the world. In some cases entire species have been wiped out.

The big fish are often taken at the peak of their sexual maturity, eliminating generations in a single meal.

Big fish also tend to be bad for our health, explains Mr. Grescoe, because dioxins and mercury leached from pollutants in the water are more concentrated in the flesh of fish that eat smaller fish.

Smaller sea-dwellers, by comparison, reproduce quickly and tend to feed at the middle and lower rungs of the food chain, on plankton, krill and algae.

These creatures are thriving in the absence of predators. Lobster stocks on the South Shore of Nova Scotia have exploded, for example, as stocks of swordfish, bluefin tuna, hake, halibut and haddock have been depleted. Cod were fished to collapse in the early 1990s. At a recent lunch, Mr. Grescoe asks a lot of questions before settling on his fish choice. He outright rejects offerings of cod, grouper and sole, all suffering from overfishing.

He inquires about the provenance of the halibut. It's from the Atlantic, which means it's overfished and high in mercury. Pacific halibut would be a better alternative.

He is also skeptical about the jumbo tiger shrimp, which he assumes are imported from Asian shrimp farms, and may have been raised in polluted waters and treated with chemicals.

Farmed shrimp from North America - notably Mexico - are better, while small wild-caught shrimp from Canadian and northern U.S. waters are the best varieties.

When it comes to fish farming, his views are mixed. He is an ardent supporter of oyster farming because the bivalves consume algae that, unchecked, deplete oxygen in the water. He is also a fan of land-based closed containment aquaculture that separates farmed species from open waters. Arctic char and barramundi are good examples; most rainbow trout comes from inland ponds in Idaho.

Farmed salmon, on the other hand, spreads sea lice to wild stocks, he says. Nothing tastes more like home than wild B.C. salmon for Mr. Grescoe, who was raised in Vancouver. However, nowadays when he eats it, he checks to make sure it comes from a sustainable source. Alaskan salmon and Nass River sockeye from British Columbia are both good bets, he says.

The farmed variety - transplanted Atlantic salmon - he describes as gooey and tasteless.

He has also developed an appreciation for McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, largely made from Alaskan pollock, whose stocks are still abundant and which is caught in a sustainable manner.

"You have to ask lots of questions about where your fish is coming from," he says.

"If you love food, that shouldn't be a problem."

*****

Is it ethnical to at this seafood?

Rainbow trout (farmed)

Mostly farmed in inland ponds in Idaho with little environmental impact.

Mussels and oysters (farmed)

Oysters and mussels clean the oceans by feeding on algae, and are farmed without chemicals.

B.C. sablefish

Also sold as black cod, this buttery-flavoured Pacific fish is sustainably harvested.

Halibut (Pacific)

Stocks are at a 30-year high. Excellent alternative to overfished Atlantic halibut.

DEPENDS, SOMETIMES

Scallops

Farmed scallops, generally sold as bay scallops, from Asia and South America are a good choice. Atlantic scallops are not overfished but they are dredged, which damages the ocean floor.

Lobster

Atlantic lobster is a good choice; avoid overfished spiny or rock lobster from Central America, much of which ends up in chain restaurants.

Striped bass

Wild Atlantic stocks are in good shape, although the fish can be high in mercury. Striped bass is also farmed in closed-containment tanks which do not pollute the environment.

Crab

King crab from Russia is overfished; Pacific Dungeness crab is an excellent choice.

NO, NEVER

Bluefin Tuna

Often called toro in Japanese restaurants, Bluefin are severely overfished and high in mercury.

Shark

Shark are undergoing catastrophic population crashes due to the craze for shark fin soup in Asia. Also sold as dogfish. High in mercury.

Chilean sea bass

This long-lived deep-sea fish is subject to extensive pirate fishing. High in mercury.

Skate

Skates produce few young and are overfished with otter trawls, which rip apart the ocean floors. High in mercury.