Over one thousand seafarers were taken hostage by pirates operating off Somalia this year in what amounted to a bumper year for piracy worldwide.
The war-torn East African piracy hotbed unsurprisingly grabbed most of the headlines with over 600 crew members still being held captives off its shores.
The latest set of figures published by the ICC International Maritime Bureau (IMB) may yet need updating in the next few days, however, as the use of motherships by Somali pirates negates the effects of monsoons in the Indian Ocean as ships continue to be hijacked.
A total of 1,001 hostages were taken by pirates off Somalia in the period from 1 January to 29 December, the piracy watchdog wrote in a brief statement on Wednesday. This was as a result of 47 hijackings in the region while in total there were 218 incidents accredited to Somali pirates.
The IMB wrote that 26 ships continue to be held captive by pirates in that region with 617 seafarers being held hostage. The figures would appear to include the hijacking of the German 5,200-dwt general cargoship Ems River (built 2010) on Monday and the release of the German 13,300-dwt chemical tanker Marida Marguerite (built 2008) a day later.
It is unclear, however, if the figures include an unknown number of crew members onboard a fishing vessel which was believed to have been snatched off Madagascar on Christmas Day and which is believed to be kept by its captors for use as a mothership.
In all there were 440 piracy attacks worldwide this year with waters off Nigeria, Cameroon, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Bangladesh all seeing activity. Apart from areas off Somalia, four other ships were hijacked, the IMB wrote without elaborating. The number presumably refers to incidents off West Africa and in the South China Sea.
The IMB’s figures of currently hijacked ships includes merchant vessels, fishing vessels, yachts and dhows. Including the Ems River, currently 18 merchant ships continue to be held off Somalia: the 4,000-dwt Iceberg I(built 1976), the 7,561-dwt Rak Afrikana (built 1981), the 17,300-dwt Suez (built 1984), the 6,375-dwt Olib G (built 1988), the 3,884-dwt Asphalt Venture (built 1991), the 22,400-dwt Yuan Xiang (built 1978), the 1,066-teu Albedo (built 1993), the 44,400-dwt Jahan Moni (built 1996), the 1,743-teu MSC Panama (built 1989), the 70,200-dwt Renuar (built 1993), the 27,900-dwt Orna (built 1984), and the 20,400-dwt Thor Nexus (built 1989).
All of the 20,200-dwt Izumi (built 2007), the 6,311-cbm York (built 2000), the 72,800-dwt Polar (built 2005), the 24,100-dwt Hannibal II (built 1983) and the 13,000-dwt Motivator (built 2007), which are also being held, are known to be used as pirate motherships.
