The High Seas Are Highly Dangerous

More people were taken hostage at sea in 2010 than in any year on record, a new report from the International Maritime Bureau says.

In 2010 pirates hijacked a total of 53 ships, capturing 1,181 seafarers, eight of whom were killed. This marks the forth year in a row that the number of pirate attacks against ships has risen, notes the IMB, which has monitored piracy worldwide since 1991.

“These figures for the number of hostages and vessels taken are the highest we have ever seen,” Captain Pottengal Mukundan, Director of the IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre, said in a statement. “The continued increase in these numbers is alarming."

The vast majority of pirate activity occurred in the Indian Ocean near the Horn of Africa, hijackings off the coast of Somalia accounted for 92% of all ship seizures last year. Indeed, the IMB notes a total of 28 vessels and 638 hostages were still being held for ransom by Somali pirates as of 31 December 2010.

“On the high seas off Somalia, heavily armed pirates are overpowering ocean-going fishing or merchant vessels to use as a base for further attacks,” Mukundan says. “They capture the crew and force them to sail to within attacking distance of other unsuspecting vessels.”

While increased patrols by international naval forces is attributed with cutting the number of attacks in the Gulf of Aden to 53 in 2010 (down from 117 in 2009), Somali pirates are adapting by travelling further afield. In December 2010, they reached as far south as the Mozambique Channel and as far east as 72° East longitude in the Indian Ocean, an operating range IMB says is unprecedented.

According to published reports, British insurer Jardine Lloyd Thompson has proposed organizing a private armed escort service for ships operating off Somalia.

However, Mukundan says the true remedy for piracy resides on land. “It is vital that governments and the United Nations devote resources to developing workable administrative infrastructures to prevent criminals from exploiting the vacuum left from years of failed local government. All measures taken at sea to limit the activities of the pirates are undermined because of a lack of responsible authority back in Somalia from where the pirates begin their voyages and return with hijacked vessels. 

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