The labels are hard to miss: blue and white with drawings of fish and the words "Marine Stewardship Council." They're popping up at stores across South Florida to identify seafood as eco-friendly.

It's all part of a growing movement to ensure abundant and healthy supplies of seafood for years to come. As seas are overfished and fish farms polluted, an array of businesses, consumers and conservation groups are uniting to take action. Their focus: to monitor and certify that wild catches are limited to sustainable levels and that farms are run in ecological ways.

Some global corporations are taking the lead.

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, has set 2012 as a target date for selling only certified fish, and fast-food giant McDonald's has switched from threatened species to more plentiful pollock for its fish sandwiches.

Consumers also have new resources to check if seafood at the market or on the menu is healthy to eat. They can check Web sites such as www.edf.org or text message a service, Fishphone, and receive health information. For example, large predators such as marlin tend to contain high levels of mercury and should be avoided.

Joyce Parisse is thrilled to know the shrimp she buys at Wal-Mart carries a certification. She'd even pay more for her dinner.

"You've got to be more environmentally conscious," said the 51-year-old casino waitress from Coral Springs, as she checked package labels to find sustainable seafood. "My kids are going to be having families soon, and what's going to be left for them?"

The problems at fisheries are serious.

University of Miami researchers say so many fish were taken from the oceans between the 1950s and 1980s that the yearly catch has been declining ever since. New technologies that improve efficiencies have not reversed the trend. In the past century, 90 percent of large fish were caught, and the average size of fish dropped by half. None of the world's coastlines today teem with the heavy densities of fish commonplace in 1900.

Even the deepest seas have been mined...

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