This sounds quite like one of the favorite tactics of the Sea Shepherds against the illegal Japanese whaling ships in the Southern Ocean. Except instead of launchers and parachutes they use Zodiacs and balls. http://www.seashepherd.org/
necro81 writes: The NY Times is reporting that a new report from Osram, a major lighting manufacturer, has calculated the total lifecycle energy costs of LED lightbulbs and found that they are approximately 20% that of incandescents. While it is well known that LED bulbs use a fraction of the energy of incandescents to produce the same amount of light, it has been unproven if the higher manufacturing energy costs made the technology a net gain. The study found that manufacturing and distribution energy costs of all lightbulb technologies is only about 2% of their total lifetime energy cost — a tiny fraction of the energy used to produce light.