Southeast Asia Piracy A Clear Threat to Seafarers – State of Maritime Piracy Report 2014 - Maritime and Salvage Wolrd News

The maritime advocacy group Oceans Beyond Piracy has launched its fifth annual State of Maritime Piracy Report, analyzing the human and financial impacts of piracy throughout 2014 within the Western Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Guinea and, for the primary time, in Southeast Asia.

The research highlights a transparent and reemerging menace to seafarers in Southeast Asian, the place OBP discovered that greater than 90% of the reported assaults resulted in pirates efficiently boarding goal vessels. A complete of 800 seafarers have been concerned in incidents in South East Asia the place violence or the specter of violence was particularly documented, based on the research.

In the Gulf of Guinea, the variety of reported assaults remained inside historic patterns, the research notes. However, the area faces quite a lot of challenges associated to persistent under-reporting of incidents and an absence of prosecutions, based on the research.

“We have observed that up to 70% of piracy-related incidents in the Gulf of Guinea are never reported, so we currently lack a complete understanding of the problem,” says Pottengal Mukundan, Director of the International Maritime Bureau. “This also makes it difficult to assess the extent of the threats seafarers face in this region.”

In the Western Indian Ocean, OBP discovered that whereas naval mandates, really helpful trade self-protection practices and the scale of the High Risk Area stay unchanged, the noticed dedication of naval property and use of vessel safety measures equivalent to elevated velocity and rerouting by service provider vessels continued to lower, ensuing within the complete financial price dropping by 28% in 2014 to $2.3 billion. The financial price of piracy within the Western Indian Ocean peaked in 2010 at $7 billion, based on OBP. In phrases of human price, the OBP research notes that 320 seafarers have been subjected to assaults within the area, with 18 hostages launched and 26 remaining in captivity – all taken from the FV Naham 3 after its hijacking on 26 March 2012. OBP recorded a complete of 18 pirate assaults within the Western Indian Ocean, with 2 dhows being hijacked however no business vessels hijacked.

Alarmingly, this perceived discount within the piracy menace has additionally resulted in additional overseas fishing vessels returning to areas near the coast of Somalia, the report says.“These provocations are similar to those that triggered piracy off the coast of Somalia in the first place,” Alan Cole, Head of UNODC’s Global Maritime Crime Programme notes. “We are already seeing an upturn in regional piracy incidents since the beginning of the year.”

Finally, the report acknowledges that seafarers throughout the globe are the first victims of piracy and armed theft at sea. A chilling instance of this are the twenty-six high-risk hostages who stay in pirate captivity in Somalia in the present day, greater than three years after the preliminary hijacking of their ship.

According to Admiral Sir James Burnell-Nugent, “The evidence shows that piracy continues to be a world-wide threat to seafarers. There are specific contexts that distinguish each region, but there is a common lesson in the need to address piracy through cooperation, vigilance, and sustained effort by all actors across the maritime sector.”