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An international scientific team has returned to New Zealand with data showing whales can be researched without being killed.
The National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (Niwa) ship Tangaroa arrived back in Wellington on Monday with 18 scientists from New Zealand, Australia and France after a trip to the Southern ocean to investigate whale activity.
Australia's environment protection minister Peter Garrett says it was the world's largest, non-lethal whale research expedition and it returned with a range of new information that will help future marine mammal conservation.
He says the joint New Zealand-Australia Antarctic Whale Expedition has achieved significant milestones during the six weeks it was in the Southern Ocean.
He says the expedition's research shows there are effective ways to collect a range of important whale data without killing them.
The expedition collected more than 60 biopsy samples, took many photo-identifications of humpback whales and acoustics data. The scientists also placed 30 satellite tags on humpback whales to provide movement data on the feeding grounds and migration routes back to the tropical breeding areas in winter.
The scientific team says it will analyse the data over the next two months to get a clearer picture on a "range of important conservation science issues such as whale movement and feeding behaviour, defining migratory routes, and mixing patterns between different breeding populations".
Garrett says research from the voyage will be presented to the International Whaling Commission meeting in June in Morocco.
The expedition is the first major project under the Southern Ocean Research Partnership formed last year. The expedition also set out to disprove Japan's claim whales have to be killed for research.
