AST Digital Magazine June 2017 Digital-June | Page 57

Volume 13
June 2017 Edition
The State of Maritime
Security
By William Lusk, Program Manager, O.C.E.A.N.S. LLC
This map shows all piracy and armed robbery incidents re-
ported to IMB Piracy Reporting Centre during 2016. (Cour-
tesy of IMB)
According to the ICC International Maritime Bu-
reau, there have been 72 reported incidents of
piracy and armed robbery since the start of the
new year.
Actual incidents may be 30% higher, as vessel
masters and shipping lines may fail to report in-
cidents of piracy and armed robbery due to:
• No theft or injury to vessel or personnel was
sustained
• To prevent bad publicity, and/or
• To avoid insurance or government red tape
resurging, but it is believed that targeted vessels
have not been following best management prac-
tices for protection against piracy.
Attacks and kidnaps remain prevalent in areas
such as the Gulf of Guinea and Sulu and Cele-
bes Seas.
Maritime piracy and armed robbery are statisti-
cally rare.
For example, a Japanese Maritime Research In-
stitute study suggested that 75,510 vessels over
1,000 gross tons traversed the Straits of Malacca
in 1999, or about 200 transits a day.
Although the International Maritime Bureau’s fig-
ure is not an unusual number from years past, it
is a surprise that incidents off Somalia are again
on the rise after a nearly 5 year hiatus (7 report-
ed incidents in the region thus far). Because 151 reported attacks were executed by
pirates in this geographic area in 1999, the prob-
ability of being attacked by pirates on any given
transit was less than two tenths of one percent.
The maritime community has been fortunate so
far with minimal terrorist attacks taking place in
its domain, perhaps the most significant in recent
memory occurring in Mumbai in 2008.
It remains unclear why Somali based attacks are 57