Global Pirate Attacks Are Up

Global Pirate Attacks Are Up, with the first nine months of 2009 seeing more pirate attacks than all of 2008. More than half of those attacks were carried out by suspected Somali pirates, causing many countries to patrol pirate hot pirate areas, like the Gulf of Aden.

“The increased activity in Somalia is the major reason for the spike,” stated Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau, which monitors shipping crimes.

Global Pirate Attacks Are Up-What Are The Pirate Figures

From January 1st until September 30th, 2009, pirates globally have mounted 306 attacks, compared with 293 in 2008.

Of those incidents, Somali pirates accounted for 54 percent. They are responsible for 168 reported attacks.

Most of the pirate attacks took place off the east coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, which is a major shipping route between Yemen and Somalia.

Successfully hijacked were 32 vessels, with 533 hostages taken. Eight hostages were wounded, four hostages were killed and one is hostage is still reported missing.

Known Somali pirates are still holding four ships for ransom along with 80 of their crew members as Somalian pirate hostages.

At this time, Somalia’s government is in transition and has been unable to stop the pirates, even though many of the pirates strong holds are based in port cities.

This has made Europe and other Western countries to step up maritime patrols, to protect their shipping interests.

“In the Gulf of Aden, the number of attacks have gone up. But because of the presence of naval vessels, the success rate of the pirates have decreased. The navies are responding very very effectively,” Mody stated.

Today’s pirates are a far cry from Hollywood’s, eye patched, peg legged swashbucklers of Hollywood. Today’s pirates have state of the art night vision goggles, carry rocket launchers and navigate with global positioning devices.

They are also trained fighters or young gangsters enlisted for the job.

They are shipped out on a larger ship and then five to seven armed hijackers get in smaller drafts and wait for their target.

Global Pirate Attacks Are Up, as global commerce picks up, more and more of the world’s fuels, minerals and other crucial commodities travel by ship.

For example: With ninety five percent of America’s foreign trade, moving by water, pirates have lots of loot to choice from.

That makes cargo a prime and easy target for robbers in countries like Somalia, that lack the resources to secure their shorelines.

Those who have tracked piracy, state that piracy started in Somalia, back in the 1980s, when the pirates claimed they were aiming to stop the rampant illegal fishing and dumping that still continues to this day, off the Somali coast.

Piracy accelerated in full swing, when the fall of the Somali government, in the early 1990s and then accelerated again, when shipping companies started paying large ransoms.

Ransom payments started out being in the tens of thousands of dollars and have since climbed into the millions. Quite a haul for poor countries. Piracy pays well. With the ransoms they collect, pirates can earn up to $40,000 a year, a fortune for someone from an impoverished country, like Somali.

It is believed that companies are simply making the problem worse by paying the ransoms.

“Yes, the ransoms have probably caused the piracy to become a bit more rampant. But at the same time, from the owner’s point of view, there is no other way currently to secure the safe release of the vessel along with the crew and the cargo. It’s basically a cycle,” Mody stated.

Somali was not the only area hit by pirates. Other trouble spots in 2009 ,were waters off Nigeria, with 20 attacks, Malaysia with 14 attacks and Bangladesh with 12 attacks.

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