Hijacked ships impact consumers, expert says

Green Bay Press Gazette

Michael McNicholas knows about pirates.

He is managing director of Phoenix Group, based in Panama, which is actively involved in combating pirates, stowaways and other maritime industry threats.

Piracy has taken center stage in recent weeks with a string of brazen hijackings on commercial shipping in the Gulf of Aden and other areas around the Horn of Africa. One of the highest-profile incidents involves the Sirius Star, a 1,080-foot Saudi Arabian supertanker hijacked by Somali pirates.

"It does hit the bottom line for the consumer," said McNicholas, who authored the book Maritime Security and has a background spanning service in the U.S. Army to specializing in counter-narcotic operations with Central Intelligence Agency.

To avoid the Gulf of Aden, Europe's largest shipping firm, A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, said recently it was telling some of its slower ships to sail around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and Norwegian shipping group Odfjell SE ordered its more than 90 tankers to do the same. That means adding up to two weeks to some voyages.

Other firms, including one of the world's largest oil tanker companies, Frontline Ltd., have said they are considering other options, including traveling around the Cape — even though such a move would extend the trip by 40 percent.

"You have a situation where Maersk said they're going to change their route to avoid the gulf, so in doing that their costs are going to be elevated, which is going to be passed on to the exporters and importers and eventually it will hit our pocketbooks, also."

There is also the potential for the loss of life in these hijackings and millions of dollars in premiums on insurance for money being paid in ransom.

Pirates come up and over

The process of boarding a loaded vessel requires timing and a couple of readily available tools on the part of the pirates, McNicholas said.

"I've seen a whole lot of container and cargo ships that have a freeboard (distance from the water to deck) that is at least (30 feet) high where stowaways as well as pirates can board without much problem," he said. "In the Americas, they use everything from ropes with grappling hooks to … extendable aluminum ladders.

"They generally come in in fast boats at an angle and bump right up against the hull and very quickly extend and throw these ladders up and hook one to the rails on the deck and they're up and over," he said.

McNicholas said the key deterrent is keeping pirates off commercial ships in the first place. That can range from the use of water hoses to CS (military grade tear) gas, electrified fences around the outer edge of the main deck and magnetic acoustic devices — equipment that sends a high-volume, high-pitched noise in a focused cone to ward off people on the other end.

"Trying … to launch a rescue operation becomes more problematic than just preventing it and deterring them from boarding in the first place," he said. "The key is trying to keep them off, not trying to manage the situation when the nightmare is onboard."

McNicholas said security teams don't have to be heavily armed.

"Good vigilance on the ship and identifying the threat … and taking those actions to deter it is very effective," he said. "Mariners generally have an aversion to firearms on board … so you're probably going to get a lot of pushback from a normal commercial shipping community to the idea of heavily armed security being on board commercial ships, especially foreign flags."

The Sirius Star is about the same length of many of the largest ships working the Great Lakes, though it is much wider than lakers. Recently, the ship, which is still being held ransom by Somali pirates, was moved further off the Somali coast, apparently in response to threats of attack against the pirates by Islamic insurgents in Somalia who take umbrage at the fact the vessel is Muslim owned.

There have been at least 96 pirate attacks so far this year in Somali waters, with 40 ships hijacked. Fifteen ships with nearly 300 crew are still in the hands of Somali pirates, who dock the hijacked vessels near the eastern and southern coast as they negotiate for ransom. more