Sea Piracy: The New Age

Through the years, we have heard the ferocious sound of the

cannons of the pirates, echoing through generations,
frightening countries and carrying death, but this time
everything has changed modern age piracy.
Nowadays, the globalization has connected almost every corner
of the planet carrying many opportunities to people and
countries, but that echo of fear still sails the sea, waiting
for the perfect opportunity to capture a ship that carries
tons of technological, biological or industrial cargo to
important countries that will pay them good to return the
ship and crew save or maybe sell everything in the black
market.
Today, piracy remains with a significant loss of 16 billion
dollars per year worldwide, specifically in the waters
between Red Sea and the Indian Ocean passing through the
Somali coast in the horn of Africa where an estimate of
500000 commercial vessels travel by a year. Thats why
recently a multinational effort lead by United States was
adopted to patrol the coast of Somalia and in Brazil, the
government also cares for an anti-piracy unit patrolling the
Amazon River.
Modern pirates travel in small boats, taking advantage of the
small number of crew members on modern cargo vessels and they
use mother ships to supply the smaller ones. Pirates operate
mainly in the waters of smaller countries with smaller navies
and large trade routes, and sometimes, they operate with
organized-crime groups.
The International Maritime Bureau estimated that pirate
attacks dominate in hostage-taking. For example, in 2006,
there were 239 attacks, 77 crew members were kidnapped and
188 were taken as hostages but only 15 attacks resulted on
murder; Somalis made about 120 million dollars a year costing
the shipping and commerce industry between 900 million and
3.3 billion dollars per year, though in the recent years, the
activities of the Somalis in the Somali Coast had drop down
due to the increased safety measurements in those waters.

In order to prevent more cases of piracy, many organizations

have appeared to enforce the law such as the International
Maritime Bureau that is in charge of the well going of
maritime commerce all around the world, the United nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea provides the framework for
repression of piracy and sea robbery under the international
law, the UN Convention on the law of the sea, some countries
navies, the US Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
It is essential to reduce the piracy in all the world, if
not, in the future a potential economic crisis could drop the
commerce down and then, with piracy, the commerce would lose
not millions nor billions, but probably trillions and maybe
some pirates could kidnap very valuable ships and cargo that
could significate a terrible problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy
http://www.un.org/depts/los/piracy/piracy.htm
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/15/worlds-most-piratedwaters.html