Norway and Japan are shoring up their unprofitable whaling industries with government subsidies—despite evidence that whalers will flounder without taxpayer support.

An economic analysis commissioned by the WWF and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society found that huge subsidies have artificially reduced the cost of whaling. With an already-struggling whale-meat market and the risk of trade sanctions, the study presumes neither country’s whaling industry will be economically beneficial without tax dollars.

And there are a lot of them.

Government subsidies equal nearly half the gross value of whale meat landings made through the Norwegian Fishermen’s Sales Organization (NFSO), while Norway has spent more than $4.9 million on marketing and lobbying campaigns to garner public support for its commercial whaling and seal-hunting industries since 1992.

Worse for the wear, the Japanese whaling industry needed $1.2 million in taxpayer money to break even during the 2008-2009 season. Total whaling subsidies have amounted to $164 million since 1998.

The study evaluates a range of direct and indirect costs associated with whaling. The wholesale value of whale meat in Japan, for example, has been slipping since 1994 when it cost $30 per kilogram. By 2006 it was only worth $16.40.

Norway stopped whaling mid-season last month, after catching less than half of its annual quota of 855 minke whales, Reuters reported. Svein Ove Haugland, a spokesman for the NFSO, said they had caught enough whale meat to satisfy the industry’s needs.

“The whaling industry, like any other industry, has to obey the market,” said Einar K. Guðfinsson, the former Minister of Fisheries of Iceland, in 2007. “If there is no profitability, there is no foundation for resuming with the killing of whales.”

(The interim government in Iceland recently reaffirmed its whaling quota for 2009, but hinted that hunting wouldn’t be legal in coming years.)

The tourism industry is also at stake. Japan and Norway have continued to whale despite a moratorium by the International Whaling Commission that bans commercial whaling. Japan kills approximately 1,000 whales per year under a bylaw that allows whaling for scientific purposes, while Norway, with Iceland, hunt another 1,000.

Eftec, an organization of economists that conducted the study, suspect further hunting will hurt each country’s more profitable whale-watching industry.

“Norway and Japan are hurting tourism, a potential growth industry in both countries in order to spend millions of dollars obtaining whale meat, the sale of which makes no profit,” said Sue Fisher, U.S. policy director at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. “How much longer are they going to keep wasting their taxpayer’s money?”

The whale-watching industry has grown so much that environmentalists used it as an argument at the IWC’s annual meeting for whaling nations to stop hunting.

A report presented at the meeting showed that the industry has more than doubled its revenues in a decade, growing at an average rate of 3.7 percent per year, Reuters reported. Global tourism has grown by 4.2  percent.

With 13 million people who participated in whale-watching in 119 countries during 2008, conservation group International Fund for Animal Welfare urged whaling nations to profit from the boom rather than lose money in a sinking whaling industry.