Somali pirates hijacked 46 ships in 2009, 47 in 2010, 25 in 2011, 14 in 2012, and none so far in 2013:
[Danish Ambassador Thomas Winkler] said in an interview that prosecuting more than a thousand pirates and transferring a significant number to Somali prisons where conditions are grim appears to be having a preventive effect.
“The number of active pirates is perhaps 3,000,” Winkler said. “So if you put a thousand behind bars, and 300-400 die every year at sea from hunger (or) drowning… you will quickly come down” in numbers.
Hopkins said ships from NATO, the European Union, China, Russia and many other countries have succeeded in disrupting and discouraging Somali pirates but they haven’t given up and still roam a huge part of the Indian Ocean as well as the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden looking for vessels to hijack.
The last successful hijacking — on May 12, 2012 — was of the MV Smyrni, a Greek-registered oil tanker less than two years old loaded with crude worth tens of millions of dollars that was released after 11 months of negotiations and payment of “a record-breaking ransom nearing $15 million,” Hopkins said.
“In my opinion, it is a poster child for what happens when ship owners don’t employ the best management practices… to prevent your ship from being hijacked,” she said. “They did none of them, and they got exactly what one might expect. They got hijacked and they paid a very heavy price for it.”
Hopkins said that while “not a single ship that has employed armed security has ever been hijacked,” there are also many other security measures that have proven effective including training crew members and posting lookouts.
The only mystery is why it took so long to address the problem.