I really do feel for the little whales,
not only do they get grenades detonated inside thier body and then have to deal with an increadible cruel and painfull death
(make no mistake if you killed a single cow in the same manner in any normal country - including Japan - you would end up in prison under animal cruelty laws)
but the only people they have protecting them are peace-nick hippies who have no clue about what they are doing!
(i mean your gonna spend a couple of mill on shiny boats, and not spend a couple of hundered dollars on some RPG's and Semtex?? (current blackmarket prices - of course that may upset the french [ for some reason] - RE: rainbow warrior)
not to mention the plethora of hi teck sollutions (GPS scramble, electromagnetic compas confusion, sonar scramble, radar jamming etc.)
all legal in international waters too (or rather not illigal
)
and the wide range of low tech sollutions, one could simply be infornt of a large vessel trailing a floated steel cable/net, that gets wrapped in the prop.......bye bye ship not moving, also engines/gearbox need overhaul.
although Japan is only whaling for "scientific" purposes right?
so how can they be allowed to sell the meat?
if i were to care enough about this issue to take direct action i would personally do the following.
1. buy a nippy sea worthy boat with a machine gun (lsw type), and a sonar speaker.
then go find pods of whales, transmitting your unique sonar beacon the whole time, pepper the pods with some bullets (this will hurt but not kill the whales), keep doing this, eventually (and it wont take long) the whales will assosiate your sonar noise with getting machine gunned and pain. thus will keep away and avoid this noise.
then all you have to do is have boats shadow the whalling boat transmitting this noise, whales know where the threat is and stay away.
or 2.
Japan says they whale for science but we all know that bollards. its for profit. thus shadow the whaling ship, wait till the have harpooned the whale, and inject the dying whale with a dangerous and highly toxic compound (or perhaps enzyme/virus/bacteria) that would render the meat unfit for human consumption. (even better a virus that would be very harmfull to humans - though i would not go as far as any pathogen capable of aerosol infection - i'm not too up on WMD legislation but pretty sure thats gonna upset someone somewhere :P )
lets see how long they can keep whaling if they are unable to sell the meat.
or 3 the russian aproach,
blackmail
4. the chinese apraoch
make a friend on the whaling ship, and have him commit sabotage. (there are so many ways this can be done without the operative being caught)
ultimatly
you dont need to stop the whaling ships, you just got to stop them making a profit, once that is done. it will stop.
and it really should.
if someone can invent a way to shoot the whale and kill it dead, then go right ahead, but as it stands, the current method of killing a whale is very cruel.