Minke route pits whale hunt against tourism Scientific discovery: A Minke whale is tracked through the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Eye to Eye Marine Encounters Australian scientists have tracked a minke whale from the Great Barrier Reef deep into the subantarctic for the first time, sharply raising the stakes of Japanese whaling. Until now, the Japanese "scientific" hunt, which kills minkes, was thought to harpoon whales that lived almost exclusively in the Antarctic. But a satellite tracking program on dwarf minke whales, the focus of growing reef tourism, followed one nicknamed Spot deep into the Southern Ocean before its tag expired. Asked whether these whales could be taken by the whalers, CSIRO environmental scientist Matt Curnock said: "We are very concerned about that, yes. In tourism, they are worth many millions of dollars more than they are in the Japanese whale meat market. Researchers from James Cook University and the CSIRO are the first in the world to track the movements of dwarf minkes, which have similar proportions to Antarctic minkes but grow up to eight metres, instead of their polar cousin's 9.8 metres. The dwarfs are the focus of a burgeoning swim-with-minkes tourism industry on the reef that JCU economist Natalie Stoeckel says is conservatively worth $16 million. Under a strict protocol, the whales are left to approach a limited number of swimmers at their own inclination. A JCU marine scientist, Jimmy White, attached tags to the dorsal fins of four dwarf minkes off Lizard Island in July. The satellite tags, the size and shape of a halved golf ball, send back data that project leader Alastair Birtles said transformed understanding of these animals and answered the mystery of where they migrated. They swam south from the reef along the east Australian coastline, sometimes covering 100 kilometres per day. Off southern Queensland, two of the tags stopped transmitting, probably as they dropped out of the whales' fins. But two kept sending position signals as the whales swam down the NSW coast and around Victoria, westward through Bass Strait. A third whale then stopped sending, while Spot's transmitter kept going as it swam into the Southern Ocean as far as 54.38 degrees south - iceberg territory - making a journey of 6000 kilometres before the final transmission on October 11. In 2006, a Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research scientific paper told of taking 16 dwarf minkes, some inside the Antarctic pack ice zone. In recent seasons, Japan's official Antarctic cruise report has claimed dwarf minke whales were not targeted. But Dr Curnock said it would be almost impossible for harpooners on a fast-moving ship in Antarctic waters to know whether the minke they were hunting was a dwarf. "You can't reliably tell from above the surface, unless you've got extraordinarily clear, calm water to see their colour patterns," Dr Curnock said. The most recent Japanese cruise report for 2012-13 details sexually mature minkes with a body length of 7.8 metres being taken and others with a minimum body length of 4.4 metres - well within the dwarfs' range. The scientists' discovery comes with a new whaling season only weeks away and the International Court of Justice yet to decide on Australia's plea to ban the hunt. According to Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists, the factory ship Nisshin Maru this week underwent sea trials after a re-fit. They expect it to depart from Japan within days. Sea Shepherd Australia's chairman, Bob Brown, said the Queensland scientists' discovery of the minkes' journey would change the way Australians thought about them. "It defies belief that [at] one end of their range, they are valued so highly and, at the other, they could be harpooned," he said.