Piracy and robbery are still real dangers

Published Tue, Apr 21, 2020 · 09:50 PM

THE world's attention right now may be on combating coronavirus but the oceans' criminals are not heeding the "stay at home" advice. They still see merchant ships and their crews as their prey.

Warnings that the industry must not drop its guard have come from both the ICC International Maritime Bureau (IMB) and the ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre (ISC)

IMB warns that seafarers face continuing threats from pirates and armed robbers on the world's seas, and reports 47 attacks in the first three months of 2020, up from 38 in the same period last year. Pirates actually boarded 37 ships in the first quarter of 2020.

Meanwhile, ISC has reported a three-fold increase in the total number of incidents reported during January-March 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. There were a total of 29 reported incidents of armed robbery against ships, comprising 28 actual incidents and one attempted incident, in Asia during January to March this year. That compares to 10 incidents, comprising …