Gulf of Aden Declared Warlike Operations Area

Catchy title? According to Lloyd List this morning:

British shipping employers and unions have agreed to declare the Gulf of Aden a warlike operations area, in a deal that will double the pay of seafarers on many ships operated from the UK while serving close to piracy prone Somalia.

Reuters also has some comments from Pottengal Mukundan, director of the London-based International Maritime Bureau regarding a desire to actually go to war with pirates, including some sage tactical advice.

"We want pre-emptive action against the mother ships before the pirates carry out a hijacking," said Captain Pottengal Mukundan, director of the London-based International Maritime Bureau, which monitors international piracy, referring to the ships pirates use as bases from which to launch attacks.

"The positions of the mother ships are generally known. What we would like to see is the naval vessels going to interdict them, searching them and removing any arms on board.

"That would at least force the pirates to go back to Somalia to pick up more arms before they could come back again," he told Reuters in an interview.

The world has allowed Somalia to take their gangster lifestyle to sea, where they can do driveby shootings on ships moving the commerce of the world. If the positions of mother ships are generally known, and we aren't doing anything about it, that would be very odd. It would be nice if we could get a real assessment from the US 5th Fleet that gives some insight regarding the challenges that prevents any action from being taken. Meanwhile, the article continues.

U.S., European and Russian navy ships, including a fleet operating under NATO, have moved into the Gulf of Aden in recent days to try to stem the piracy threat and protect some of the 20,000 merchant vessels that use the waterway each year.

Around 60 vessels have been seized by pirates this year, with an estimated $18-30 million paid in ransom for the release of crews and ships. A Turkish vessel with 20 crew on board was seized on Wednesday.

Interesting, some hard numbers. We already highlighted the average increase to insurance costs are up $8000 a ship. That makes the financial impact of piracy in insurance premiums alone around $160 million dollars a year. Now British crews are getting double pay working the region. Throw in around $24 million for randoms paid, and we have hit the $200 million annual cost.

That is simply not enough money for anyone to care, and the problem is compounded by international fishing. The fishing off Somalia is very, very good, lots of rare top types of tuna and other great eats that sell big. This LA Times article says 800 ships are fishing Somalia illegally every year. I would guess each is averaging at least half a million in hauls annually, probably a hell of a lot more. Well, do the math, 800 ships making a minimum of half a mil in fish comes to $400 million. You see, piracy not only pays the local pimp who can whore off the women to the high paying pirate, but it pays in the east, specifically China and South Korea, who steal the natural fishing resource from the region.

Until the illegal fishing problem is resolved, don't expect the pirate problem to be resolved.