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On World Oceans Day, Seafood Cookbook Author Warns Of Over-Fishing

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - This is World Oceans Day, the first time it has been marked by the United Nations.

National Geographic Fellow Barton Seaver is not against eating seafood. He's the author of the cookbook For Cod and Country, but he says technology has made commercial fishing so efficient that it threatens the very species people consume.

He says the size of our seas, covering two-thirds of earth's surface, is a mixed blessing.

"One of the great joys of the ocean is that it's deep, mysterious, unknown, but one of the dangers of the ocean is that exact same, is that we don't have any real access, visually, or culturally, to the havoc that we're wreaking on the oceans."

Like the big Pacific garbage patch and over-fishing, both out of sight, out of mind.

The point of Seaver's book is how to eat well and do good, all at once. Asked what could we eat for dinner tonight that would be sea-friendliest, he says a dozen oysters.

Reported by John Ostapkovich, KYW Newsradio

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