S. partnership for protecting and restoring shared ocean resources.

In theory, declines of prized species could free ocean resources for killers like bulls, expanding their ranks.

The flag is sourounded by a blue border symbolising the north's ocean resource.

Their mission is "to ensure the conservation and responsible use of our nation's coastal and ocean resources".

But that will only happen, he said, if the true owner of the ocean resources, the public, demands it, which has yet to happen.

"How about taking a couple of million of that money from the state's general fund," he said, "and spending it on the ocean resource?"

Also the stakeholders should take a role of responsibility with the government in a form of co-management to manage ocean resources.

This expansion of sovereign rights, he said, would "advance the development of ocean resources."

Whaling for scientific research is indispensable to establish the proper conservation of whales and ocean resources.

With that in mind, some states, notably California, have recently strengthened their laws and overhauled the way they manage ocean resources.