Pirates in the News! May 16,2008

So it's been a busy couple weeks for me, but finally, here I am to update you on pirateology's most recent events.An international fund that aids sustainable environment projects has committed $63 million to help preserve Southeast Asia's Coral Triangle from overfishing and climate change, the Asian Development Bank said Tuesday.

The United States has a proposal before the UN Security Council that would allow the US Navy as well as the navies of other countries to enter Somali waters in order to pursue pirate vessels. This comes in the wake of some extremely controversial remarks by higher ups in the Somali Government alleging that the United States is just playing policemen and that the US Sailors were callus and not taking their job seriously.

Contrary to a Somali official’s criticism about American forces, U.S. Navy officials said piracy off that country’s coast is of great concern to the United States and the international community.

Abdullahi Said Samatar, security affairs minister in Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region, was critical about the U.S. after Somali forces rescued a hijacked ship carrying food to the impoverished nation.

The ship, called the al-Khaleej, originated in Dubai and was seized by pirates on April 22. Somalians rescued the vessel and arrested seven suspects, who were sentenced Monday to life in prison, The Associated Press reported. Three other suspects were wounded in the rescue.

“It is sad that the American forces off the coast of Somalia are here for fun and are not combating the pirates,” Samatar said afterward.

Without commenting directly on Samatar’s statement, Navy officials said they have put many resources into combating the problem.

Pirate attack forces are slowing oil drilling off Somalia.

Spain's Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero deliberately avoided confirming whether or not a ransom payment had been made to secure the safe release of the 26 crew of the 'Playa de Bakio' tuna fishing boat seized by pirates on Sunday, April 20th. Which is strange because it seems de rigour to pay ransom, France did it, Russians do it, Private Companies do it.
The boat and its crew were released unharmed and arrived in Seychelle Islands earlier this morning, prior to being repatriated.

It was later released that the Spanish government HAD paid a ransom.

Heavily Armed Pirates attacked Thai and South Korean ships near Malaysia and in the Gulf of Aden respectively. And a ship was attacked in the Malacca Strait on May 10.

Greenpeace is busily releasing information about Tuna Pirates. Overfishing being one of the major causes of Oceanic Environmental Decline.

Greenpeace exposed an illegal tuna purse seiner, the Queen Evelyn 168, in a pocket of international waters between Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia. This Philippines-flagged vessel was at the site of a transfer of tuna between her sister vessel and a refrigerated mothership, the Kenken 888. It is likely that a transfer of fish at sea involving an illegal vessel was about to occur, but the arrival of Greenpeace prevented it from taking place as the vessels immediately separated and fled. "Transfers of fish at sea are well know to be facilitating pirate fishing around the world now we also have the proof of this in the Pacific. It is unacceptable that this is still allowed to continue", said Greenpeace Australia Pacific campaigner Lagi Toribau on board the Esperanza. "The pockets of international waters between Pacific island countries are especially prone to pirate activities and should be closed down to all fishing. Transfers of fish should only be allowed to happen in port so they can be monitored properly"

Pirates in the News! April 28, 2008

Howdy! This week I'm posting from delightful, landlocked West Texas, I was called away from maritime haunts to visit my parents for their 40th Wedding Anniversary. So Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad! Arrrr!

There's been plenty of piracy in the news this past week, not the least of which seems like a game of catch up by European Nations to be one of the cool kids in pirate thwarting after France's successful return of La Ponant, and France's associated "plan pirate-mer", piracy foreign policy plans that were announced this last week (sorry for those of you who don't speak french).

Spanish, German and Italian Ships have all been sent down to the Gulf of Aden off Somalia, several pirate attacks have been thwarted and these have been making the rounds of the international news.

Of course, what's really interesting is what hasn't been front page news:

In the past couple of days, the story that pirates off the coast of Yemen attacked a 150,000 deadweight ton oil tanker with a rocket got pushed to the back pages (New York Times, AFP, and Wall Street Journal, for example). Each article attributes at least a pip of the recent increase in the price of oil to the attack, even though the attack failed to cause any significant damage.

This quote is from a very interesting article by Eugene Gholz,

Pirates are something of a problem for small ships traveling near Somalia and Yemen. They can approach yachts, tugs, and even small cargo ships. Captains and passengers on these types of vessel should take precautions, perhaps stay out of the dangerous waters and certainly stay alert during transits.

But oil tankers are vastly larger ships — in many cases over a thousand feet long. Pirate boats have trouble approaching tankers at all (dealing with the waves that the tanker pushes outward as it plows through the water), let alone pirates’ subsequent struggle to clamber up the side of a tanker while it is underway (necessary to board the ship and capture its crew and cargo). And clambering would really be necessary: the deck of an oil tanker is quite high off the waterline, well above the deck height of pirates’ boats.

The attack on the Japanese tanker this week may represent an escalation in pirate tactics — firing a rocket at the tanker (rather than just threatening ships with small arms fire), presumably in an attempt to force the tanker to stop so that the pirates could board it. But tankers are so big that rocket fire has almost no effect. The pirates pursued the Japanese tanker for hours and were only able to put a small hole in the ship that had no effect on its ability to continue its journey.

And of course one expects to hear of successes against Somali pirates more than failures, but I find it really compelling when we hear about people rocketing oil tankers, if for no other reason than the drama, and the sheer balls of such an attack. While obviously, as Gholz points out, a few rockets are not enough to take down a super-tanker and the flow of oil across the seas is hardly imperiled, but isn't that pretty interesting news for its own sake?

Pieces of Eight

Pieces of eight were the most important currency on the high seas during the Golden Age of Piracy

The term refers to Spanish currency, which were minted of solid silver from the Americas and transferred back to Europe. One piece of eight was worth eight reales and is also called an eight real coin. It was the first world currency and even today, many currencies are based on the Spanish dollar. These coins were made exclusively of silver and were worth their own weight. A gold Spanish coin would be worth 16 reales, all pieces of eight are correctly made of silver.

They were often stamped to say that a certain company or person had assayed their worth and determined them genuine silver. Silver was the only currency that China would accept, so these coins were used round the world as a solid measure of wealth.