SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia on Friday threatened Japan with legal action if diplomatic efforts fail to halt its controversial whale hunts.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said a court bid was "still an option" as Australia and New Zealand continue to voice strong opposition to the practice.

"If we get to the stage where we think our diplomatic efforts have been exhausted and we haven't achieved our objective, then we continue to leave open the possibility and the prospect of international legal action," Smith told Sky News.

He added that a legal challenge could be lodged with the International Court of Justice or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

Japan hunts up to 850 whales each year for "scientific research" despite objections led by Australia and New Zealand. Whalers have come up against stiff opposition from environmentalists over the past two seasons.

Australia and New Zealand also announced a six-week expedition aimed at proving whale research does not have to involve killing the animals.

"We very strongly believe that you don't need to kill whales to understand them," said Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

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TOKYO (AFP) — Major whaling nations Japan and Norway are wasting millions of dollars in taxpayer money to prop up what is likely a loss-making industry, according to an international conservation group.

"It is clear that whaling is heavily subsidised at present," said a report by the WWF, which analysed the direct and indirect costs of hunting the ocean mammals and selling their meat.

"In both Japan and Norway, substantial funds are made available to prop up an operation which would otherwise be commercially marginal at best, and most likely loss making," it added.

While demand for whale meat is on the decline and prices have about halved over the past decade in Japan, the government had dished out 12 million dollars during the 2008-09 season for the industry to break even, WWF said.

Total Japanese subsidies had amounted to 164 million dollars since 1988, the report added, citing government data.

Meanwhile Norway had spent a total of nearly 20 million dollars since 1993 in direct and indirect aid on its whaling activities, said the report, which was co-published with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

Government subsidies had accounted for almost half of the gross value of nearly all the whale meat sold in the country between 1994 and 2005, the report added, citing a national fisheries sales body.

That proportion had decreased in the past three years after the government replaced a costly inspection scheme on whaling boats with an electronic logbook system, the report said.

"In this time of global economic crisis, the use of valuable tax dollars to prop up what is basically an economically unviable industry is neither strategic, sustainable nor an appropriate use of limited government funds," WWF species director Susan Lieberman said in a statement.

The report came as the International Whaling Commission (IWC) prepared to meet Monday in Portugal's Madeira island, although hopes were muted for much progress on reaching compromise on whaling and conservation.

Japan launched its latest whaling mission in April with the aim of catching up to 60 minke whales off its northeastern coast.

The focus of negotiations is now whether to allow Tokyo to conduct commercial whaling near its coast if it scales down its Antarctic hunt.

Japan defends whaling as a tradition and accuses Western critics of disrespecting its culture. It has threatened to leave the IWC if the body does not shift to what Japan believes is its original purpose -- managing a sustainable kill of whales.

Japan agreed in 2007 to suspend plans to expand its hunt to include humpback whales, which are popular with Australian whale-watchers.

Norway and Iceland are the only nations that hunt whales in open defiance of a 1986 IWC moratorium on commercial whaling.

Fri Jun 19, 12:10 PM ET

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Whalers cut open a 35-tonne Fin whale, one of two fin whales caught aboard a Hvalur boat off the coast of Hvalfjsrour, north of Reykjavik, on the western coast of Iceland. Iceland would probably be forced to end its controversial whale hunting tradition in its bid to join the European Union, the head of a leading Icelandic whaling company said.

(AFP/Halldor Kolbeins)

                                                                 

Thu May 28, 5:06 AM ET

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Local residents catch and slaughter whales near the town of Hvalvik, May 23, 2009. More than 180 pilot whales (Globicephala melaena) were killed in the small town of Hvalvik during the traditional whale killing In Faroe Islands. Residents of the Faroe Islands, an autonomous province of Denmark, slaughter and eat pilot whales every year. The Faroese are descendents of Vikings, and pilot whales have been a central part of their diet for more than 1,000 years. They crowd the animals into a bay and kill them. The Faroese aren

REUTERS/Andrija Ilic (FAROE ISLANDS ANIMALS ENVIRONMENT)