New Zealand and Australian scientists will leave for a whale research expedition to Antarctica on Monday, demonstrating that the sea mammals can be studied without killing them.

Results of the six-week journey on New Zealand research vessel Tangaroa are expected to play an important role in the whale hunting debate over Japan's yearly killing of about 1,000 whales for science, the New Zealand Press Association reported on Saturday.

Japan hunts in Antarctic waters thanks to a loophole in the 1986 ban of commercial whaling that allows the mammals to be killed for research.

In March this year, 13 nations, including New Zealand, developed the Southern Ocean Research Partnership (SORP) with the focus on improving whale conservation, leading to an International Whaling Commission (IWC) reform.

The New Zealand-Australia expedition is SORP's first. Scientists will use non-lethal methods to study the ecology of whales with skin samples, the collection of faeces, satellite targeting, passive acoustic techniques, and the traditional sighting technique in the Ross Sea and surrounding waters.

Though the research's main purpose is to collect data, Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett, a vocal opponent of whaling, said on Friday that findings would also help prove that whales can be researched without being killed.

New Zealand Research, Science, and Technology Minister Wayne Mapp said it was important for New Zealand and Australia to prove and demonstrate research can be done in a non-lethal way.

But the Japanese government-sponsored Institute of Cetacean Research admitted research gathered by SORP will have little impact on them as it was a philosophical issue.