Today Australia announced that fisheries patrol vessel will be sent to the Antarctic in order to gather evidence against Japan’s whaling fleet.

Last month the Japanese fleet set sail in the Antarctic waters planning to harpoon over 1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks, the Telegraph.co.uk reports.

The Australian icebreaker Oceanic Viking will monitor the Japanese fleet for the first time. Also monitoring it will be A319 Airbus commercial jet used by the Australian Antarctic Division.

Oceanic Viking will leave in a few days for the Southern Ocean.

Forty two percent of Antarctica and the whales are claimed by Australia. The whales are set to be killed in the economic zone, which covers 200 nautical miles from the Antarctic coastline.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace already sent a protest ship, Esperanza, to stop the whale hunters. It sailed today from Auckland.

Australia's environment minister Peter Garrett said: "Slaughtering whales is not scientific. It's cruel, it's barbaric and it's unnecessary."

Foreign minister Stephen Smith said that Australia will form a group of the nations that are against the whale hunting and will lead it into a protest against the Japanese government in a few days.

The U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, Thomas Schieffer, said on Wednesday that Japan decided not to hunt whales in this expedition into the Antarctic, Reuters informs.

The whales were hunted almost the extinction until their protection was ordered in 1966 by the International Whaling Commission.

Schieffer told reporters: "I think we had an agreement ... between the United States and Japan that humpback whales would not be harvested, I think, until maybe the International Whaling Conference in June.”

Australia wants to build a case against Japan that could include the International Court of Justice in The Hague or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

A Japanese foreign ministry spokesman said in Tokyo: "Japan's whaling is being conducted in line with international treaties and for the purpose of scientific research. We would like to win the understanding of others."