Feel like a fish out of water when it comes to making sustainable seafood choices? From Jeremy Piven’s bout of mercury poisoning to hard-hitting documentaries about the world’s collapsing fisheries, troubling fish news abounds — yet these health and ecological concerns remain near-invisible in stores and restaurants.

Trader Joe’s blithely continues to sell endangered fish (PDF), sushi restaurants pass off escolar as tuna, and gravely endangered bluefin tuna’s still served at high-end restaurants. What’s an eco-pescatarian to eat?

Until we have laws that successfully prohibit overfishing and prevent pollution that loads up fish with mercury, it’s on you to navigate the seafood aisles to select sustainable options. That said, thanks to new tech apps and the hard work of seafood-friendly environmental nonprofit groups, it’s gotten a lot easier to figure out what fish you can enjoy guilt-free. Some pointers:

At the supermarket:

>> Use the mobile Seafood Watch Guide. Monterey Bay Aquarium’s well-known Seafood Watch Guide — which shows you at a glance the best and worst seafood choices — is now available as an iPhone app and in a mobile version. Anyone with a smart phone can consult the list while at the supermarket. Of course, if you’re old school, you can print out the wallet-sized guide to carry around too.

>> Select a seafood-friendly store. Prefer to stick to stores that already have sustainable seafood policies in place? You can, thanks to a rather dour-sounding report — “Carting Away the Oceans: How Grocery Stores are Emptying the Seas” — put together by Greenpeace. This report scores supermarkets on their fish purchasing policies — and names and shames companies like Trader Joe’s, a.k.a. Traitor Joe’s, for failing to do better for the fish.

Greenpeace’s efforts have convinced other chain stores to shape up. Target, for example, recently announced it will eliminated farmed salmon in all its stores — though this news is slightly complicated by the fact that Environmental Defense fund, with Bon Appetit Management Company and Wegmans, has recently developed new guidelines for sustainably farmed salmon. [Update: Bon Appetit informed me that this farmed salmon initiative's been discontinued.]

At the restaurant:

>> Pick a fish-friendly restaurant. A new website called Fish2Fork ranks restaurants based on their sustainable fish options, ranging from five dead red fish skeletons for horrific to five blue fish for best in class. Being new, though, the database isn’t robust yet, with only two restaurants listed for Los Angeles — but you can help add to the lists.

>> Ask questions. The Seafood Watch Guide’s a great reference at restaurants too — except most menus don’t go into the detail that Seafood Watch Guide demands. Want to know whether your salmon’s sustainable wild Alaskan or unsustainable farmed Atlantic? Ask — and if the chef doesn’t know, avoid it.

In the kitchen:

>> Get free sustainable seafood recipes. Decided to try a new type of fish recommended on the Seafood Watch Guide? The Monterey Bay Aquarium now offers a free new seafood recipe a month from a celebrity chef — with dishes ranging from Grilled Oysters with Wasabi and Miso to Baked Clams with Bacon.

>> Mind your mercury. The Seafood Watch Guide does note seafood known for high mercury content — but remember that eating multiple servings of lower risk fish can up your mercury levels too. If you’re a canned tuna fan, Environmental Working Group has a tuna calculator that lets you figure out how much solid white or chunk light tuna you can consume safely in a week, depending on your sex and weight. If you’re a woman who weighs less than 200 lbs, eating just one can of albacore tuna a week puts you over the FDA’s recommended limit for mercury.

Photos via Monterey Bay Aquarium, Greenpeace

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