The pirates were raking in an average of almost $5m in ransom per ship, according to One Earth Future ( OEF), an NGO. In 2011 the IMBreported 236 attempted attacks. A fifth of the world’s commercial shipping passes through the Gulf of Aden, a body of water flanked by failed states-Somalia and Yemen. Whereas buccaneers in the Gulf of Guinea and South-East Asia stole cargo, the Somalis seized crews and often the ships themselves, hauling them back to the ungoverned coast of their lawless state. Experts worry that neither of the solutions used in those two regions will work in west Africa.įor a while, Somali piracy attracted unprecedented public attention, displacing images of peglegs, eye patches and a dreadlocked Johnny Depp from the popular imagination. Shipping companies fear that pirates in the Gulf of Guinea are becoming more like Somalia’s. But the foreign navies remain there, and many shipowners have hired private armed guards to protect their vessels. At their peak, Somali pirates hijacked entire ships and their crew for seven-figure ransoms. Mr Williams describes most of what remains as “marine mugging”: a petty thief boards a ship to swipe some rope or a can of paint. The authorities in South-East Asia are more trusted incidents off Somalia are reported to the international navies deployed there since 2009.Ĭyrus Mody of the IMB says that South-East Asian navies have curbed piracy by co-operating more effectively with each other. Under-reporting is also less of a problem in these regions. Between 20 the number of incidents each year in South-East Asia fell from 141 to 60, and to just three off Somalia, which in 2007-12 faced this century’s worst piracy crisis.