According to the Russian Navy, they have been really involved in counter-pirate ops the past decade, with some years being more involved than others:
Since 2008, Navy ships have carried out 32 trips to the Gulf of Aden and other pirate destinations, escorting 152 convoys and 727 ships (56 ships under the Russian flag).
Ten attempts were also prevented, seven boats and 80 Pirates were detained. In addition to the Gulf of Aden, Russian military vessels have conducted anti-pirate patrols in the Singapore and Malacca Straits, South China and the Caribbean Sea.
The Russians also seem to be fans of breaking lots of eggs, no matter how small the omelet.
Humans At Sea’s Save Our Seafarers organization interviews a mariner who, as an Indian Naval cadet, was held hostage for eight months (!) by a pirate action group armed with RPGs off the coast of Somalia in 2010. The guy seems really sedate, but make no mistake, what he went through was pretty rough and went past getting just a little roughed up.
The video also features an interview with the EU naval force patrolling the area, who seems like he is trying to walk a dozen beats with one cop. Pretty sobering if you are a seafarer in that part of the world.
NATO’s last counter-piracy surveillance aircraft is flying her final mission, as part of the now-shuttered Operation Ocean Shield. The Royal Danish Air Force crew a Boeing Maritime Surveillance Aircraft, a modified Bombardier Challenger 604, and talks about how much the coast of Somalia has changed since the height of pirate activity in the Horn of Africa.
The operation, which began in 2009 as part of a broader international effort to crack down on Somali-based pirates who had caused havoc with world shipping, was conducted alongside Operation Atalanta— the EU operation in the area which current have a frigate each from Holland and Spain supported by a German P-3– and the 25-nation Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) Combined Task Force (CTF) 151, both of which are on-going.
At the height of piracy in January 2011 over 700 hostages and 32 vessels were being held by Somali pirates, with huge ransoms demanded for their release. Today, no vessels or hostages are being held by Somali pirates. The most recent pirate incident occurred on 22 October 2016, when a chemical tanker, CPO Korea, was attacked by six armed men 330 nautical miles off the east coast of Somalia.
“The global security environment has changed dramatically in the last few years and NATO navies have adapted with it,” NATO spokesman Dylan White said in a statement. “NATO has increased maritime patrols in the Baltic and Black Seas. We are also working to help counter human smuggling in the Mediterranean.”
Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the water…
On Oct.25, there was a LNG tanker, Galicia Spirit, which was attacked by a skiff off the Yemen coast. While at first thought, you may think pirates, but there is much more to the story.
In an update on Thursday, Teekay said it had now conducted an investigation with security experts. This indicated that “the skiff (small boat) that engaged in an attack on the Galicia Spirit using small arms was also carrying a substantial amount of explosives.”
It added: “While the intentions of the attackers and the use of the explosives is unknown, the investigation findings indicate that the explosives would have been sufficient to have caused significant damage to the vessel.
“It appears, however, that when the skiff was approximately 20m (meters) from the vessel, the explosives detonated, destroying the skiff and ending the attack.”
Also last week, came news that a crew of a South Korean chemical tanker recently thwarted the first attack the pirates of the Somali coast in over two years.
European Union’s counter-piracy naval force (EU Navfor) confirmed on Nov. 4 that six armed men attacked chemical tanker CPO Korea 330 nautical miles (610 km) east of Somalia on Oct. 22, the first reported attack on a major vessel off the country for two and a half years.
The last reported attack was in February 2014 and involved a container ship which came under fire from gunmen in waters near Somalia, EU Navfor said.
