Ireland embarked on a campaign at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Monaco yesterday to sell its controversial plan to lift the outright ban on commercial whaling.
The Irish whaling commissioner, Mr Michael Canny, said: "I'm talking to other commissioners and trying to estimate how much consensus there is on individual items. I'm still optimistic."
Most IWC member governments expressed serious misgivings about the plan outlined on Tuesday, which seems as unpopular with the anti-whaling camp as it does with whaling nations.
Mr Canny said he expected to know by the end of the IWC annual meeting tomorrow whether there was enough support to warrant a formal proposal in time for next year's meeting in Oman.
The plan would ban whaling on the high seas but allow some hunting in coastal areas for local consumption and under the strict control of the IWC.
"Scientific whaling" - killing whales for research as the Japanese do - would be phased out.
Opponents of whaling, such as Britain, Australia and the United States, reject any move to allow commercial whaling even though Japan and Norway already defy IWC resolutions and have stepped up their whaling activities in recent years.
"It doesn't look like there will be consensus, not at this stage," said a delegate from one of the anti-whaling countries. "The whalers are conceding nothing."
Norway's response has been guarded, but its whalers oppose any plan limiting consumption of whale meat and products to local areas. The Norwegians are keen to export whale blubber, which is not popular domestically but prized in Japan.
Japan's delegates say the clause banning high seas whaling contravenes the IWC's mandate to regulate whaling through regulations designed to preserve whale stocks.
Mr Canny said Japan also opposes the ban on "scientific whaling".
He said the surge in whale kills, which have tripled since the start of the decade to 1,043 in the past 12 months, is what drove Ireland to seek a compromise.
Environmental lobbying groups at the IWC meeting were divided on the plan, with some saying it was the only realistic way to bring Norway and Japan back under IWC control.
They are concerned that a break-up of the IWC could lead to a revival in uncontrolled hunting of whales, as a few species have begun to recover their numbers after three decades of protection.
Japan and Norway now hunt the relatively small minke, the only plentiful balleen (toothless) species. The IWC estimates there are about 760,000 minke whales worldwide.
Other environmental groups say the plan marks a reversal for the IWC, which voted a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982 to study whale stocks and established a huge sanctuary in the Antarctic, where most of the big whales live, in 1994.
"The Irish proposal, while good-intentioned, legitimises illegal whaling by Japan and Norway and we should not be rewarding those countries," said Ms Patricia Forkan of the US Humane Society.