U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Reports, 9 April - 7 May 2025

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 7 August - 4 September 2024

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 18 October - 15 November 2023

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More than that, MARAD REd Sea Hijacking Alert

The Bahamian flagged M/V GALAXY LEADER was hijacked approximately 50 miles west of Hodeida, Yemen in the Red Sea on November 19, 2023. See UKMTO-IO 446 and subsequent warnings under Recent Incidents at www.ukmto.org. Exercise caution when transiting this area. U.S. commercial vessels operating in this area should review U.S. Maritime Advisory 2023-011 (Threats to Commercial Vessels – Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, Bab al Mandeb Strait, Red Sea, and Somali Basin) for amplifying information and points of contact. This Alert will automatically expire on November 26, 2023. Any maritime industry questions regarding this alert should be directed to GMCC@uscg.mil.

From our friend Sal Mercogliano:

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 11 October - 8 November 2023

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 12 July - 9 August 2023

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 31 May – 28 June 2023

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 3 - 31 May 2023

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 12 January to 9 February 2022

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 6 October - 3 November 2021

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 30 June - 28 July 2021

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 26 May - 23 June 2021

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 20 January to 17 February 2021

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U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 26 November to 23 December 2020

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Nigeria: How Not to Fight Local Pirates and Sea Kidnappers

When local armed criminals take advantage of rules prohibiting their targets from also being armed, you get reports like this Shipping lines at crossroads over private armed guards

As the world’s navies could not control vast area in the high seas to secure all ships

sailing to various ports, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO)’s Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) in 2011 approved an interim guidance to shipowners, ship operators and shipmasters to use privately contracted armed security personnel on board ships transiting the high risk piracy areas in the Gulf of Guinea and other zones in the Gulf of Aden.
***
The development made ship owners to pay as much as $60,000 to armed security guards to secure and protect vessels and crew.

For instance in Nigeria, shipping lines claimed that they spent over $200 million annually to protect cargoes and their crew by placing armed guards on board merchant vessels because of the menace of armed robbery in the Niger- Delta area.

However, the Federal Government said last week that such practice would no longer be business as usual for liners sailing on Nigerian waters.

Nigerian coasts have already been labeled as the hotbed of piracy and sea robbery.

The Government said that it was illegal and against Nigerian constitution for private armed guards to operate onboard vessels.

Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, in Lagos, said that there were reasons to be worried about armed guards.

He noted that the private armed guards would not perform their anti-piracy duties in a way that does not escalate violence, involve unlawful use of force or cause international incidents.

Good golly. Why not sent out engraved invitations to the bad guys?

Oh, yes, the Nigerian government plans to offer up some sort of "investment" in security boats and the like to protect those they are looking at removing their protection:

The Managing Director of the authority, Hadiza Bala Usman, said at a stakeholders’ meeting in Apapa, Lagos that the management was considering a number of strategies to check the attacks.

The managing director noted such strategies when reinforced, would bring to book those behind the attacks on vessels berthing at the Lagos Port Complex.

Usman noted that more patrol boats would be acquired to patrol waterfronts.

Good luck with that.

Sea Crimes: ONI's Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report 8 March - 6 April 2016

Ripped from the website of the ONI Piracy page:

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report 8 March - 6 April 2016

And a new incident off Nigeria, as reported by the Turkish news site Hurriyet in Pirates abduct six Turkish crew off Nigeria:

Pirates have attacked a Turkish cargo ship off the coast of Nigeria, kidnapping six crew members in a region increasingly hit by piracy in recent years, the Nigerian navy said on April 11.

All the six Turkish crew members, including the captain of the vessel, the chief officer and the chief engineer, were abducted by the attackers," Nigerian Navy spokesman Chris Ezekobe told AFP.

The pirates attacked the vessel in the dead of night while it was steaming through the oil-rich Niger Delta, added the spokesman.

Kidnapping is a Nigerian nightmare.

ShipSpotting.com

© Aleksi Lindström

West African Pirates and Kidnappers Still Active, But Enforcement is Catching Up

Report from Africa Times on 8 Feb 2016, "Nigerian Navy thwart hijack" reminds us that, though
there has been a significant decrease in piracy off East Africa, there is still stuff happening off West Africa:

The Nigerian Navy has thwarted an effort by suspected pirates to hijack and capture 25 foreign nationals who were on board a Maersk merchant ship which was carrying cargo to Port Onne, Nigeria. The crew were made up of mixed nationalities eight South Africans, eight Philippines, five Indians, two Thais and two Britons.

The Executive Officer of the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) Pathfinder, Olusegun Soyemi, told journalists on Sunday said that the vessel has docked safely and those on board were uninjured, reported Premium Times.

Soyemi told journalists that at eight in the morning on January 5, the ship, Safmarine Kuramo, was attacked by pirates.

“We got may-day distress call that the ship was boarded by unconfirmed number of sea pirates after entering the nation’s territorial waters,” Soyemi said.

“We immediately dispatched a warship (NNS Centenary) and attack gunboats led by Navy Capt. Chiedozie Okehie of the Eastern Naval Command to rescue the situation.

“The sea pirates apparently on sighting advancing naval troops fled the scene for fear of being arrested by our operatives.
***

Before this latest event, there was this 3 Feb 2016 report "Nigerian separatists hijack ship, demand release of leader":

Nigerian separatists have hijacked a merchant ship and threatened to blow it up with its foreign crew if authorities do not release a detained leader agitating for a breakaway state of Biafra, military officers said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. Rabe Abubakar, the Defense Ministry spokesman, confirmed the hijacking occurred on Friday and called it “an act of sabotage.” He did not tell reporters the name of the ship.

Abubakar spoke on Monday. Other officers on Tuesday told The Associated Press that the navy is in pursuit of the captured vessel. The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press, said the hijackers have given the government 31 days to free Kanu or say they will blow up the ship along with its crew.

Maritime industry reports indicated the vessel was an oil tanker seized about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off Nigeria’s Bakassi Peninsula, along Nigeria’s southeastern Atlantic Ocean coastline, near the border with Cameroon.

“The group boarded the tanker from two fast boats and took control over the vessel and locked the crew in the mess room” before heading for the Niger Delta, the Bulgarian-based Maritime News reported.

and

In an apparently unrelated development, pirates seized the Greek-owned chemical tanker MV Leon Dias off Nigeria’s coast, according to an official of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to reporters. He said it was hijacked on Friday, other reports said Sunday, and diverted to an oil terminal off Cotonou, capital of neighboring Benin. Maritime News said the chief officer was seriously injured and is being held hostage with four other seamen.

This latter hijack reported 5 Feb 2016 in Benin Navy guarding Greek tanker, hostages held in Nigeria:

The navy of Benin is guarding an oil tanker hijacked by militants who are holding five crew members hostage in Nigeria, Nigeria’s navy and a shipping security expert said Wednesday.

The Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned MT Leon Dias is anchored off Cotonou, Benin’s commercial capital, Nigerian navy spokesman Commodore Kabir Aliyu told The Associated Press. He gave no details about the crew and hijackers.

The hijackers disembarked from the vessel on Sunday and took five hostages with them — the captain, chief engineer, third engineer, the electrician and a fitter, said Dirk Steffen, maritime security director of Denmark-based Risk Intelligence. The ship then sailed to Cotonou, he told the AP.

2015 Has Been a Slower Year for Sea Pirates

With the slowdown (well, nearly complete stoppage of Somali piracy), 2015 has, in the words of the ICC Commercial Crime Service/International Maritime Bureau here, seen a "reduction"in overall piracy at sea/crimes against mariners:

In Southeast Asia, a piracy crackdown appears to be bearing fruit, with only two hijackings reported in the third quarter of the year. Indonesian and Malaysian authorities have also arrested and in some cases prosecuted, members of product tanker hijacking gangs, notably those behind the MT Sun Birdie and MT Orkim Harmony attacks.

“The robust actions taken particularly by the Indonesian and Malaysian authorities – including the arrest of one the alleged masterminds – is precisely the type of deterrent required” commented P Mukundan, IMB Director.

The two hijackings, on a small product tanker in the Straits of Malacca and a fishing vessel 40-miles west of Pulau Langkawi, were among 47 incidents the IMB PRC recorded globally between July and September.

To date 190 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships have been officially counted this year, the greatest number in Indonesia, which tallied 86 mainly low-level incidents, followed by Vietnam with 19 low-level reports.

While only one new incident of an actual attack was reported for the last quarter in the Gulf of Guinea, IMB believes the real number to be considerably higher.

Nice ICC/IMB graphic:

Yes, it is still dangerous out there.

Nigerians gangs may have halted the cargo-jacking and returned to kidnapping crew, as set out in this Reuters report:

Pirates attacked a Polish-owned cargo vessel off the Nigerian coast and kidnapped its captain and four crew, Polish authorities said, in the first documented incident of its kind in almost year in some of the deadliest shipping lanes on earth.

The Cyprus-registered Szafir was boarded overnight by armed men in two boats, who looted the 10,000-tonne container ship, operator EuroAfrica said.

Gulf of Guinea Pirates: "Pirates kidnap two U.S. sailors off Nigerian coast"

The old kidnap for ransom racket off Nigeria hits the U.S. (not for the first time, by the way, this has been going on for years) as reported in "Pirates kidnap two U.S. sailors off Nigerian coast":

Pirates attacked an oil supply vessel off the Nigerian coast and kidnapped the captain and chief engineer, both U.S. citizens, an American defense official and security sources said on Thursday.
***
The U.S.-flagged, C-Retriever, a 222-foot (67 meter) vessel owned by U.S. marine transport group Edison Chouest Offshore, was attacked early Wednesday, UK-based security firm AKE and two security sources said. The company was not immediately available for comment.

A U.S. defense official said the State Department and FBI were leading the American response to the incident. A second defense official said the U.S. Marine Corps has a small training unit in the region but it was not clear if it would get involved.

For a little history (back to 2006), see Wikipedia's Foreign hostages in Nigeria. I think the racket has been going on longer than that, though.

A report that says 26% of worldwide kidnapping happens in Nigeria can be found here.

What you pay for, you will get more of.

About 75 BC, Julius Caesar was kidnapped by pirates. The rest of the story from Plutarch:

Caesar . . . went down to the sea and sailed to King Nicomedes in Bithynia. With him he tarried a short time, and then, on his voyage back, was captured, near the island Pharmacusa, by pirates, who already at that time controlled the sea with large armaments and countless small vessels.

To begin with, then, when the pirates demanded twenty talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them fifty. In the next place, after he had sent various followers to various cities to procure the money and was left with one friend and two attendants among Cilicians, most murderous of men, he held them in such disdain that whenever he lay down to sleep he would send and order them to stop talking. For eight and thirty days, as if the men were not his watchers, but his royal body-guard, he shared in their sports and exercises with great unconcern. He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians, and often laughingly threatened to hang them all. The pirates were delighted at this, and attributed his boldness of speech to a certain simplicity and boyish mirth. But after his ransom had come from Miletus and he had paid it and was set free, he immediately manned vessels and put to sea from the harbour of Miletus against the robbers. He caught them, too, still lying at anchor off the island, and got most of them into his power. Their money he made his booty, but the men themselves he lodged in the prison at Pergamum, and then went in person to Junius, the governor of Asia, on the ground that it belonged to him, as praetor of the province, to punish the captives. But since the praetor cast longing eyes on their money, which was no small sum, and kept saying that he would consider the case of the captives at his leisure, Caesar left him to his own devices, went to Pergamum, took the robbers out of prison, and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking.

Rough justice. Old school, you might even say.

This is a criminal business enterprise in a country that is a nearly failed state.