Whale Wars

I was watching "Whale Wars" with my dad earlier today, a show about a group of Anti-Whalers, who sail international waters look for the Japanese whaling boats, throwing rancid butter and booby traps on the whaling boats in an attempt to stop whaling. Now, I'm not too sure about the rules of this show, per se. It seems like the Japanese have all the right in the world to whale if they want to, but the Anti-Whalers, let's call them contras ;), feel that it's barbaric and inhumane, so they try their hardest to stop their opposition.

On the last few episodes, the contras had caught up to the mother ship of the Japanese whaling fleet, the Nise Maru, but were having trouble keeping the ship in sight. So they sent a very small, very fast ship, The Ady Gil, to follow the Nise Maru and try to hinder it going any further. After a few tricks by the Ady Gil, it seems they have slowed down the mother ship, but have exhausted their fuel in the process. Now they must wait 3 days for a friendly ship to arrive and refuel them.

But as they wait around, recalling their wins and watching the other Japanese ships pass by, they realize that one of the recon ships is sailing dangerously near to them, and eventually it crashes into the Ady Gil, slicing the ship in two. The crew is fine, but now there are only two ships left in the contra fleet. Now, for some reason I can't seem to understand, in the next episode the captain of the sunken Ady Gil is going to try and board the Japanese Recon ship for what reason? We don't know, but we have to watch to find out.

What I don't get is, why? I understand the whales are important, but does one really feel the need to fight so hard for their cause that they want to put human life in danger? It would be one thing if the cause was about humans, but it's not, it's about whales. When does a cause become too ridiculous to fight for? When does retaliation become too much? When human life is at stake? Or do we have to wait until a life is actually lost? Or maybe it gets to be too much when the human emotions just can't take it anymore?

I'm not sure. I think that it's much more complicated than that, but right now I think I'm done with this post. Sometimes, a cause is just too much to fight for. The question is, what cause is worth going through hell to fight?