OVER the past three decades piracy has gone from being something largely out of the history books to a huge problem disrupting the main Asia-to- Europe shipping lanes and then to, well, what exactly?

The International Maritime Bureau's (IMB) latest quarterly report on maritime piracy says that 121 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships worldwide were reported in the first nine months of 2017.

In total, 92 vessels were boarded, 13 were fired upon, there were 11 attempted attacks and five vessels were actually hijacked in the first nine months of 2017.