Somali piracy surge seen; vessels asked to carry out thorough ship and voyage risk assessment

Earlier this month, pirates – believed to be operating from a fishing vessel repurposed as a mothership – attacked a Cayman Islands-flagged chemical tanker. This assault followed a report from a Seychelles-flagged fishing vessel, whose crew had encountered suspicious skiffs. The skiffs only retreated after the vessel’s onboard protection team fired warning shots.

A few days later, a pirate group using a hijacked dhow as a mothership targeted a Malta-flagged product tanker. The pirates managed to board the vessel, prompting the crew to take refuge in the ship’s citadel. Hours later, a Spanish frigate from the EU Naval Force Operation ATALANTA boarded the tanker, discovering that the pirates had already fled, leaving the crew unharmed. The pirates returned to their mothership, which was later identified as a fishing dhow, and subsequent analysis indicated that the same mothership was involved in all the incidents.

For nearly a week, EU Naval Forces tracked the vessel until it entered Somali territorial waters, where the pirates ultimately escaped.

Are we prepared to suppress the threat?

The Somali piracy incidents in early November beg the question whether we are headed into a new Somali piracy crisis like the one we saw in the 2000s and early 2010s. It is always difficult to predict what will happen, but there are some indications 

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