Where and Why Do Modern Pirate Attacks Happen?

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‘According to Brandon Prins a professor of international relations at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, the major hotspots for piracy in Africa are the Gulf of Guinea and the Gulf of Aden. In Southeast Asia, those hotspots are the Sulu and Celebes seas as well as the Malacca Strait and Bangladesh.

Notable, however, is even in these hubs of pirate activity, the rate of pirate attacks has largely declined. During the period between 2009 and 2011, the IMB was recording more than 400 pirate attacks each year largely driven by Somali piracy. Since then, attacks have returned to levels comparable to those of the late 1990s before a slight uptick in the number of attacks last year.

“If you compare [the amount of attacks] to something like 2009, 2010, 2011, then it has decreased and decreased significantly…but the decrease is much larger as a result of this abnormal increase in Somali piracy,” Prins said. “If you look at piracy in 1998…you’re probably in the range of 200 to 250 incidents…Once the Somali piracy went away, you went back to the more average or common amount of piracy.”

When Economic Prospects are Grim, Piracy Thrives - Prins listed some other factors that contribute to maritime piracy including economic weakness, poverty, joblessness, political violence, large populations, and proximity to major trade lanes which creates the opportunity for piracy. One example of how this works in practice is the research of Sebastian Axbard who studied how fishing conditions correlated with the rate of pirate attacks in Indonesia.

“When you have good oceanographic conditions, you have more fish and higher incomes for the fishermen and as a consequence, you also have a lower number of piracy attacks,” Axbard told The Globe Post. “It really seems to be this income channel that’s important in this setting and because of environmental shocks, fishermen in my study are not able to reap the benefits from fishing, so they turn to this other potential income source which is engaging in piracy attacks.”

According to Axbard, not only does is research highlight a connection between income opportunities for fishermen and piracy but could also have potentially important implications for how we interpret the consequences of climate change, which is projected to change global fishing conditions.’ (Source) 

Let’s continue - Global sea piracy ticks upward, and the coronavirus may make it worse

Start at the beginning – Kimmy meets some pirates