Ships have few options against Somali pirates

The 20,000 merchant ships that traverse the Gulf of Aden each year have few options to combat the scourge of piracy off Somalia's lawless coast.

Given their massive size, the ships can't always outrun the small, agile speedboats that the pirates use. If ships arm their crew, they risk escalating the situation or potentially igniting their flammable cargo.

Bypassing the Gulf of Aden to get between Asia and Europe also can rack up a massive costs and add as much as two weeks to the already long voyage.

And though Somalia's struggling government has pledged to combat piracy off its coast, the nascent government can barely secure the few square miles (kilometers) it controls in the capital, Mogadishu, much less along its 1,900-mile (3,100-kilometer) coast, the longest in Africa.

Noel Choong, who heads the Malaysia-based piracy watchdog group International Maritime Bureau, said the ships' best option is to keep a round-the-clock watch and take off at the first sign of trouble. This approach has worked for dozens of ships that have come under attack in Somali waters over the past year.

"It's very simple," Choong said. "The minute they notice small boats approaching their ship, they should take evasive measures, increase speed and at the same time radio for help. A lot of ships escape by doing this."

Ships also should install barbed wire or similar deterrents on the ship to prevent pirates from scaling the sides and boarding.

Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at the London-based think-tank Chatham House, said ships also can travel at full speed, and take evasive procedures such as using water cannons and fire hoses to flood the engines of the pirates' skiffs.

Anti-piracy training courses, like the ones taken by some members of the U.S.-flagged ship briefly seized Wednesday before the crew took it back, also might help, Choong said.

The best solution, governments, piracy experts and ship companies agree, would be for Somalia to improve stability on land, luring desperate young men away from a life of crime on the high seas. But the country has been ravaged by nearly two decades of anarchy and violence, so a quick solution is not likely.

Choong said arming crews would only raise the stakes. Pirates do not normally harm their hostages, but adding guns to the equation could change that.

"We do not approve or support that crews be armed," Choong said. "Once you start arming the crew, then the pirates will start shooting the crew, even an unarmed crew. ... Once that is done you will have more problems because the crew will start shooting at other ships."

Avoiding the Gulf of Aden is neither time- nor cost-effective, he said, though two prominent shipping companies - including A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S - last year ordered slower ships to sail around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, a move that can lengthen routes by as much as 40 percent.

Three months into an international anti-piracy campaign, as many as 17 nations are participating in increased patrols and more are expected to join.

But according to the U.S. Navy, it would take 61 ships to control the shipping route in the Gulf of Aden, which is just a fraction of the 1.1 million square miles (2.85 million square kilometers) where the pirates have operated.

A U.S.-backed international anti-piracy coalition currently has 12 to 16 ships patrolling the region at any one time.

"The pirates are having a field day, attacking ships freely," Choong said. "At the moment, the risks are very small and the rewards are very high."