A few years ago, the anti-whaling activist group “Sea Shepherd” got themselves a highly advanced carbon-fiber boat that looked like something out of science fiction. They promptly decided to run it under the bow of a *steel*-hulled Japanese whaling boat… and discovered that carbon fiber is the wrong thing to make a demolition derby vehicle out of. It sank, taking a whole lot of investment to the bottom of the Pacific.
So, they got themselves an even bigger boat, built along similar lines. Instead of carbon fiber, it was made from fiberglass.
It just got whacked by a rogue wave. And guess what: it turns out fiberglass is the wrong thing to make a vehicle out of if you are going to slam a mountain of water into it. One of the pontoons is “severely damaged” and the hull is cracked, and the crack is widening. The other Sea Shepherd ships are 20 hours away from a rescue.
Sea Shepherd anti-whaling ship severely damaged by wave
Stupid hippies.
This is one of those situations, like the Iran-Iraq war, where you want *both* sides to lose. The Japanese really need to stop whaling, and their claims that they are doing so for “scientific research” are obvious bullcrap. But Sea Shepherd… ye gods. They get themselves a pile of money, and what do they do with it? Instead of spending it on a *good* ship, they buy a *cool* ship, apparently thinking that the unusual lines of the vessel will intimidate the Japanese. Look, dude, these are *Japanese.* They thought it would be a neat idea to weld themselves into hastily constructed solid-rocket-powered flying bombs. They built a nuclear reactor on a fault line near a coast known for tsunamis. They’ve been attacked by Godzilla dozens of times. They eat sea creatures that *sharks* would turn their noses up at. They think tentacle porn is awesome. So the likelihood that Japanese whalers are going to be intimidated by an easily shattered Klingon Battlecruiser on pontoons is patently ludicrous.