A squally front is a bit of a concern for John Susman on a recent morning. As a renowned seafood provedore, and longstanding supplier to some of Australia’s most acclaimed eateries and top chefs, Susman knows that the rough weather will have a knock-on effect for restaurants and retailers when it comes to selling fish. And that brings Susman back to the boats, which would usually be out hauling in a catch at this time of day.

“We’re trying to work out who should go fishing and shouldn’t go fishing,” he says with a laugh. “As soon as we see a front like this come through it’s always fun.”

These days, Susman heads up an agency that helps fishermen connect with restaurateurs to get their fresh catch on the plates of hungry diners. Susman is positively hooked on the subject of fish and seafood, so much so that he admits he should have grown scales and a dorsal fin over the last three decades in the industry. That enthusiasm is illustrated in an encyclopaedic new book, Australian Fish & Seafood Cookbook.

The meticulously researched cookbook by Susman, Anthony Huckstep, Stephen Hodges and Sarah Swan, lavishly photographed by Ben Dearnley, reflects the authors’ desires to share their knowledge with a wider audience. It offers a step-by-step guide to various local species – everything from abalone to whiting – with detailed information about how to select, prepare and cook each one.

“There was, I felt, a fairly limited knowledge or understanding for seafood,” Susman says.

Despite its incredible flavour and nutritional benefits, fish doesn’t rate very highly when cooking at home. It’s not considered a staple, like chicken or beef, and many tend to ignore it.

There are 6,000 local marine species, but a very small number of those are eaten in commercial quantities. What’s more, we import almost 70 per cent of the seafood we consume.

New Zealand is, in fact, the largest supplier of fresh fish to Australia (its fishing grounds are more productive than ours),while our imports consist of mostly lower value boneless fish, calamari, octopus and farmed prawns.

Susman hopes to inspire a newfound appreciation of native species, seasonality and provenance for home cooks and professional chefs alike.

“You walk into a butcher’s and they’ve got four animals there,” he says. “A fishmonger has hundreds of different animals. The level of culinary adventure that you can have trawling through them can never be underestimated.”

Sustainable seafood is increasingly becoming the protein of choice in leading restaurants, while catching and handling methods have become more important than ever. Eco-conscious chefs are electing to feature by catch species on their menus – fish caught while targeting other more familiar fare.

“I’m excited about catfish, moonfish and diamond-scale mullet,” says Ryan Squires, the inventive chef at Esquire and Esq in Brisbane. “The mullet makes for a wonderful sashimi. It’s firm, crisp and has a phenomenally high fat content.It’s the wagyu of the ocean.”

Squires, who lives on the Gold Coast, starts his days with a text message at 2am. The alert comes from fishermen on a local boat, advising him when they’ll be arriving back with their daily haul. That exchange informs what he’ll be serving in his restaurants on the day.

“The simple philosophy we follow is that we buy off day boats,” he says. “We’ve never had a fish delivered directly to our doorstep – we source directly from reputable trawlers or fishermen.”