Whale Hunts

After reading this article written by Rafi Khatchadourian about Paul Watson and how he goes on these crazy trips to save whales from being hunted I am some what thrown on to which side is actually "right" here. There is Watson who is trying to protect the whales by trying to stop the hunters and then there are the hunters, such as the Japanese, who are hunting the whales. It seems that the obvious choice who is in the wrong would be the whale hunters but that isn't necessarily true when you consider the fact that the whale savers ram their boat into the hunters boat in order to save the whales. This conflict makes you think "who is the good guy in the story?"

Paul Watson is known for protecting the marine life, whales are what he is known for, with a crew of 52 volunteers. They sail out to sea and ram whale hunters boats. In the text it states:

"When Watson is separated from land, he tends to behave like Captain Nemo, which is to say the he does what he thinks is right, even if it involves a violation of custom or the destruction of property."

He feels strongly about the whales and even in the text states that the whales are to be more intelligent then humans. This interested me when I read it so I decided to research that statement little bit further. I read an article on the Scientific American site, it talked about how whales do have larger brains then us humans. It is 8 times larger and has more surface area. The question was then, are they actually smarter then us? It stated

"You need to take into account brain-to-body size. When this is done, the winner is .. well, the tree shrew, followed by humans and then porpoises."

I guess this makes Watson's opinion untrue.
Aside from that subject he believes in saving whales so much that he disregards rules when they "interfere with his agenda". The article talks about different scenarios where he hunts down Japanese whale hunters. As for the whale hunters, although the are wrong for hunting whales, that does not justify Watson attacking their ship.
In the text it states

"The Japanese fleet is run by the government-subsidized Institute for Cetacean Research in Tokyo but the institue has produced virtually no research of any regard, and all the whales that are purported to be under study are also butchered for the purpose of selling whale meat to the Japanese public."

The whale hunters are suppose to be studying the whales to see when they will be enough to harvest for profit but so far that has not been what the whales are being used for. Even though they are not being used for study I don't feel it gives Watson the right to ram their boat. My opinion on this is is that not only is he putting other human lives at stake but also how does he know that the two boats fighting wont effect the whales? Is it possible that the whales can be harmed while the two boats collide? Is saving the whales so important that you put other humans lives on the line?
To me, I don't think Watson is right for attacking other boats. I think that even though the whale hunters are harming whales, since there are no laws saying you can't hunt them then there not doing anything legally wrong. Killing the whales is sad but to me, harming humans is even more sad. Plus, the Japanese do have good food.