Humpback whales off Kaikoura's coast will join the hunted list if voting goes Japan's way tonight at the International Whaling Commission meeting in South Korea.
Japan wants to expand its controversial "scientific" whaling programme - long derided as "whaling in disguise" by anti-whaling nations - to include humpback and fin
whales and double the number of minke whales it kills under the programme each year, currently around 440.
Arriving in the South Korean city of Ulsan for the annual IWC meeting, Conservation Minister Chris Carter said Japan's scientific research was a "sham", while Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell labelled it "obscene".
Mr Carter and Whaling Commissioner Sir Geoffrey Palmer are leading the delegation which will line up with Australia, the United States and Britain to prevent any expansion of the scientific programme.
Mr Carter said the tiny, impoverished Pacific nation of Nauru, an IWC member for the first time this year, was expected to turn its back on Pacific neighbours and vote with Japan.
"We understand their membership [of the IWC] has been paid for by Japan so that could tip us over by one vote," he said.
Japan is also threatening once again to walk away from the IWC if the vote doesn't go its way.
Mr Carter said there was little chance of the 1986 moratorium on whaling being overturned at this year's meeting because that needed a three-quarters majority.
But Japan could get the 50 per cent support it needed from the IWC's 66 member states to begin killing humpbacks for its research programme by next month.
The giant whales pass Kaikoura as they migrate each year from their Antarctic feeding grounds to breed in tropical waters.
Thomas Kahu, of Whale Watch Kaikoura, said the thought of whales being harpooned angered tourist operators here and in Australia.
