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The current trend of environmental responsibility has made "green" the buzzword of the decade. Lately, I've been focusing my eco-consciousness on "blue", the colour and emotional state of the world's oceans.

Whether it's from over-fishing, pollution or climate change, the oceans are in a dire state, and with the world's population expected to top nine billion by 2050, it's going to take a lot more than avoiding Chilean sea bass to save them.

As with any controversial topic, it's always good to do a little reading to get a better handle on the issues. Here are three books that fit the bill.

Charles Clover, a British environmental journalist, starts The End of the Line (University of California Press, $17.35) with a brilliant analogy: to illustrate the destruction wreaked by bottom-trawling fishing, he asks the reader to imagine a land trawl cutting a lethal swath across an African savannah, taking out every tree, bush and animal in its path. What follows this chilling introduction is a concise look at the politics, economics and science that led up to the precarious state of global fish stocks.

Clover keeps his pen as sharp as a swordfish's bill, taking celebrity chefs to task for serving "the marine equivalent of the panda." To balance the doom and gloom, he ends the book with some suggestions to save the oceans from becoming nothing more than a salty stew of algae.

My brother, Mark, who teaches a course on conservation biology at the University of British Columbia, recommended reading Callum Roberts's The Unnatural History of the Sea (Island Press, $27.95) to learn more about the oceans blue. I know science and page-turner are rarely used in the same sentence, but I had trouble putting this fascinating book down.

Roberts is more thorough than Clover, going back hundreds of years, looking at everything from medieval river fishing to 18th century whaling. It reminds me of Farley Mowat's Sea of Slaughter, but without the angry bitterness that infects Mowat's seminal work. At the end, Roberts offers a detailed and holistic plan to save the oceans while continuing to fish them in a sustainable manner.

For a break from environmental science and marine biology, try The Sushi Economy by Sasha Issenberg (Gotham Books, $32.50). Issenberg discusses the exponential growth in the global popularity of sushi, focussing mostly on bluefin tuna, the most coveted (and costly) fish. From Tokyo's famous Tsukiji fish market, to Nobu Matsuhisa's chain of glamorous restaurants, to an Australian tuna ranch, the book jumps all over the place but manages to work as a whole.

Issenberg doesn't give enough ink to the precarious state of bluefin stocks, and I was shocked he didn't write one word about the consistently high levels of mercury found in this fish, a growing controversy. But it certainly offers some insight into the deep-rooted culinary traditions that make saving the oceans an upstream battle.