Australian researchers are to begin an aerial count of whales in the Antarctic ahead of the Japanese hunt. A team from the new Australian Centre for Applied Marine Mammal Science will spend several weeks flying over 150,000 square km of pack ice off eastern Antarctica to count minke whales from the air.

The project will enable the first authoritative insight into the number of whales surviving in the pack ice and will be central to continuing international debate about whaling and management of the Southern Ocean fisheries. Japan's whaling fleet plans to hunt 935 minke whales, 50 fin whales and 50 humpback whales and is already on its way south. Humpbacks were one of the first species to be protected by the International Whaling Commission.

Australia’s new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will decide this week whether to send a navy ship and long-range aircraft south to gather evidence for a case against Japan in the International Court of Justice in The Hague or the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea in Hamburg to add to international pressure against whaling. However as usual Japan's fisheries agency says its whaling rights will be confirmed. Japanese Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Masatoshi Wakabayashi, whose responsibilities include whaling, also said that Japan will not tolerate any moves to obstruct their “research” whaling programme.