Somalia Pirates

[robpage]

From todays "Daily Telegraph " UK . The Kenyan courts where they try these pirates have limited holding facilities , so the navies and armed international forces who catch them have been letting them go free when they find Kenya cannot cope , with their skiff that they started with although without the weaponary , only to see them reappear a few weeks later , Has the world gone mad . I used to be a bit of a pacefist , but hell if they are Pirates caught red-handed , I am thinking if you cannot keep them , to hell with it dangle them from a high tree !! set them adrift somewhere and let them paddle home ! It might just put their friends off trying the same tricks .

In the immortal words of the late Victor Meldrew , "I cannot Believe it !!!!!!!! "

[happy daze john in oz]

Rob mate i totaly agree, the world is now full of do-gooders and governmenst afraid to take tough decissions in case it offends others. So we remain at the mercy of these and other thugs. The problem is that the world is now ruled by minority decission by weak poorly maintained governments.

[jimmys]

Mrs Chandler has now been separated from her husband. Off course this has made it more difficult for a rescue. Try to rescue one and they kill the other. She was badly treated when she did not leave her husband as requested.
A terrible state of affairs.
Hand the pirates over to some of the Russian States and they will boil them in oil for free.

regards
jimmy

[robpage]

Is this why Kenya turns its back and lets the pirates go ??? I sincerely hope not , but am left wondering !!!!

JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer Jason Straziuso, Associated Press Writer – Mon Jan 11, 12:31 am ET

MALINDI, Kenya – People here have one thing to thank Somali pirates for: Better fishing.

In past years, illegal commercial trawlers parked off Somalia's coast and scooped up the ocean's contents. Now, fishermen on the northern coast of neighboring Kenya say, the trawlers are not coming because of pirates.

"There is a lot of fish now, there is plenty of fish. There is more fish than people can actually use because the international fishermen have been scared away by the pirates," said Athman Seif, the director of the Malindi Marine Association.

On one early morning, as the sun bathed their wooden dhow in a pale yellow, four fishermen jumped out of their rickety 15-foot boat, grabbed a hand-woven straw basket and waded ashore. The basket held the bounty: 175 pounds (80 kilograms) of sailfish, barracuda and red snapper, the haul from a 12-hour night on the ocean. Each fisherman stood to make $12, enough in this town to be considered a decent night's work.

Fishermen and sportsmen say they've been catching more fish than ever. Howard Lawrence-Brown, who owns Kenya Deep Sea Fishing, said fishing stocks over the last year have been up "enormously — across all species."

"We had the best marlin season ever last year," said Lawrence-Brown, who owns Kenya Deep Sea Fishing. "The only explanation is that somebody is not targeting them somewhere. ... There's definitely no question about it, the lack of commercial fishing has made a difference."

Fishermen in the region have seen their incomes and quality of life rise. New boats and better equipment can be seen on the water.

In Malindi, a second-tier tourist town whose tastiest seafood restaurant is called "The Old Man and the Sea," after the Ernest Hemingway novel, the income of many families is determined by the number of fish caught during a half-day's turn at sea.

On a recent weekday, fisherman Abdi Ali said he has more money of late to send his kids to high school, which costs money in Kenya. As Ali spoke, a man nearby held up a 2.5-foot (.75-meter), 9-pound (4-kilo) red snapper to motorists on Malindi's main oceanfront drive in hopes of enticing a sale.

"This year the amount of fish we have caught has been very good. We get about 150 kilograms to 200 and even 300 kilograms, depending on how much we fish," said Ali. Three hundred kilograms is about 660 pounds.

"There were fish that had disappeared and have come back like the barracuda, oranda, red snapper and other types," he said. "We are very happy now that there are so many fish."

Fishermen in Somalia, too, say they've seen increased catches. Traders at a Mogadishu fish market are happy because more fish means lower prices, which means more Somalis can afford to buy.

"I remember some days I used to go to the sea early to catch fish and would return with no fish, but nowadays there are plenty. You can catch it everywhere," said fisherman Bakar Osman, 50. "I do not know the reason but I think the foreign fishing vessels, which used to loot our fish, were scared away by pirates."

Somali pirates have increased attacks the last two years because of the millions of dollars in ransom they can earn. They currently hold close to a dozen vessels and more than 200 crew hostage. Fishermen here acknowledge the horror of the attacks — they occasionally are harassed by pirates themselves.

Before the pirates came out in big numbers, fishing longliners roamed the coasts, Lawrence Brown said, laying out miles (kilometers) of line.

"They kill everything from the bottom of the ocean to the boat. They run at 22 knots. They can lay their lines for 24 hours, pick them up and get out of there," he said. "The damage on the sports fishing side is immeasurable."

A report on pirates this year by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore said the value of illegal catches from Somalia's maritime jurisdiction is estimated at between $90 million and $300 million a year, and that foreign fishing vessels hail from all around the world.

The report's author, Clive Schofield, a research fellow with the Australian Centre for Ocean Resources and Security at the University of Wollongong, called it ironic that nations contributing warships to anti-piracy efforts are in some cases directly linked to the foreign fishing vessels "stealing Somalia's offshore resources."

"This situation has led some pirates to justify their actions on basis of illegal foreign fishing activities — styling themselves 'coastguards' and characterizing ransom demands as 'fines,'" the report said. "Without condoning acts of violence at sea, it is clear that the Somalis who hijack shipping off their coast are in fact not the only 'pirates' operating in these waters," it said.

Piracy has not had a huge effect on Kenya's overall fishing industry, which is not very well developed on the coast, according to the permanent secretary for Kenya's Ministry of Fisheries Development, Micheni Japhet Ntiba. Kenya has brought in between 5,000 and 7,000 metric tons of fish off its Indian Ocean coast each of the last several years, he said, less than a tenth of Kenya's yearly catch from Lake Victoria, on Kenya's western edge.

Piracy "is a negative thing for Kenya fisherman. It's a negative thing for the Kenyan economy. It's a negative thing for the western Indian Ocean economy," Ntiba said. "What I think is important for us is to invest in security so the government and the private sector can invest in the deep sea ocean resources."

Still, Kenya's sports fisherman say the pirates appear to have had a hugely positive effect on their industry. Angus Paul, whose family owns the Kingfisher sports fishing company, said that over the past season clients on his catch-and-release sports fishing outings averaged 12 or 13 sail fish a day. That compares with two or three in previous years.

Somali pirates, Paul said, are a group of terrorists, "but as long as they can keep the big commercial boats out, not fishing the waters, then it benefits a lot of other smaller people."

[Stuart Henderson]

Just received my February edition of Sea Breezes and see that its not only the east coast of Africa experiencing piracy albeit of a slightly different method. Off the Nigerian coast ships are regularly being attacked,boarded and robbed by armed pirates/crooks whatever. Recently a C/O was shot & killed during one such episode. As Sea Breezes point out there is a lot of difference between the Somalian government and lack of infrastructure than the oil rich Nigerians which has the largest Navy on the West Coast. Strong action must be taken.

[jimmys]

Nothing much changed in Nigeria you did not need to go to sea the piracy was alongside.
Up in the Brass River nothing was safe including human life. Guns everywhere to get a ship loaded. Somebody killed its all been heard before. What a place!!!

regards
jimmy

[robpage]

We used to keep the fire hoses fully ready to go , and aim water at them if they got close , I dont think thy had AK47's in those days , but a skiff full of water was a slow ride , or swim home . We had a bunch of AB's who used to run a first to sink a pirate sweep . A bit heartless but it was thirty five years ago , I see Nigeria hasnt Changes , From memory Dakar was as bad

[robpage]

began with a green blip travelling in the wrong direction.

Captain Peter Stapleton was chatting with his chief officer on the bridge of the 18,000 tonne cargo ship Boularibank when the green light on the radar caught their attention.

"It appeared to be putting itself in a good position across our stern about two miles [3km] away from which it would quite likely launch an attack," he remembered.

The Boularibank was returning to the British port of Hull from a journey to Malaysia on 28 April 2009 with a Russian crew and 11 passengers, one of whom was the captain's wife.

There was still a day to go before the ship entered the pirate-haunted waters of the Gulf of Aden but Captain Stapleton, 56, had already ordered anti-piracy drills.

Bad feeling

When he realised that he was about to enter a real-life drama, the captain found himself "surprisingly calm". As he began giving orders to his crew, he began to mentally tick boxes.

"You ask yourself: 'Have I done this? Have I got that ready? Have I told everyone what we're going to do?'"


LISTEN TO THE PROGRAMME
Taking a Stand, BBC Radio 4, Tuesday 19 January at 0900 and again at 2130 GMT
Or listen via the BBC iPlayer

One of the first things he did was to tell his wife he had a bad feeling about the approaching green blip. He found her even calmer than himself.

"I think she was quite sceptical that they would actually try it and she still can't really believe it. It's like people getting run over by buses, it will never happen to me," he recalled.

Back on the bridge, he watched as two attack boats were launched from the trawler that was acting as the pirates' mother ship.

Repel boarders

Capt Stapleton knew that trying to turn the ship or outrun his assailants would be futile. The Boularibank was too big and slow for an escape based on speed.

"So what we tend to do is just to try and make them weave which slows the speed down unfortunately, that's just a feature of manoeuvring ships.

Warship next to pirate boats
Warships from around the world have gone to tackle Somali pirates

"But it does create a bit of a lumpy wash that these small boats have got to cross over all the time so it means they've got to do some work to catch up with you, it's not just straight alongside and bang on board."

Capt Stapleton summoned his passengers to the bridge. Some were "rubbernecking" out the windows to try and catch a glimpse of the pirates, almost as if they were a tourist attraction.

Capt Stapleton told me he decided very early in the crisis that he did not intend to languish in some grim Somali port waiting for ransom negotiations to take place. His hardy Russian crew agreed.

"Russians are a tough bunch of guys anyway, they've had a hard life in their history and they are pretty tough… They were prepared to defend the ship as best they could. They knew that I wanted to defend the ship. I wanted to get back home and they want to go home."

Operating on that unequivocal principle they set about repelling the boarders.

Shiver me timbers

By the time the pirates came close, and realised Capt Stapleton was not going to surrender, the bullets started to fly, ricocheting off the ship's superstructure.

A rocket propelled grenade was fired and the blast was heard by the engineers in the bowels of the ship. Another followed soon after.

Luckily neither caused any injuries. The captain's response was to "release the port-side battery" as he put it. This meant the crew tumbling 10-foot (3m) long pieces of heavy timber onto the attacking boat. It was a simple tactic but it drove the attackers back.

"My bottom line was I don't want to kill anybody but I want to put them off boarding my ship so if you drop them in the water in front of a speed boat he has got to pull away from you, he cannot go over it. So that was the thinking all the time. Passive defence."

Saved

Capt Stapleton's seamanship and the crew's bravery saved the Boularibank and its passengers from capture.

He remains remarkably matter-of-fact about the whole affair, as if it were simply a minor occurrence in the life of the high seas.

Last November he was awarded the Merchant Navy Medal for bravery and he continues to sail the route.

"Well because you've got to get home," he says bluntly, "that's the bottom line. It's the gateway back to Europe so you've got to go through there

[John Small]

As per Jimmys comments November it was rdported back that a team ( snipers) and a boarding crew were on board the Wave night.

Another comment that was made, was that they had been training for that particular eventuality, that very day. A comment was made that if they had chased after these pirates, the hostages would have been handed over in exchange for saving there own lives.
I cant help thinking the Royal Navy of the old days, would have dealt with this situation a lot more efficiently, and got a result there and then.

Red Tape comes to mind

[Red Lead Ted]

One thing that seems to have been forgotten or lost in all these posts and solutions to combat these low life,Although the world and its uncle no were they are all situated and the area hostiges are moved around along with the pirates.Its worth mentioning the gravy bowl gets handed out right to the top as in the somali government and ordinary peasents amongst there community.I read a report that a woman of no substance just an ordinary somali citizen was paid half a million dollars for a rocket launcher. Obviously its the whole country that is corrupt. Why not take a super tanker out of mothballs {of which there are many} load her down to the water line with fresh water crew her with special armed forces of nato coalition make her a sitting duck for these pirates.When approached give them a taste of there own medicine. Prevention better than cure. Do this a few times on a regular basis and i think they might just think twice. Regards all ted.