The seas that swirl around us are actually pretty resilient—despite what we often hear about the ocean and the ways it is imperiled. Ecosystems driven to the brink after things like oil spills can actually recover quite quickly. The greenhouse gases we pump into the atmosphere are, in large part, sucked up by our tireless seas.

There may be an even more profound way for the oceans to forgive our mistakes: by providing us lots of food. That’s the premise of a book that came across my desk, The Perfect Protein, by Andy Sharpless. He heads the ocean conservation nonprofit Oceana. There’s a lot of untapped potential swimming all over the planet. If only we managed the way