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Sea piracy has fallen to its lowest level since 2008, including a sharp decline off the coast of Somalia. However, the International Maritime Bureau warns Africa’s Gulf of Guinea is growing increasingly risky for shipping. There have been 233 reported pirate attacks worldwide in the first nine months of this year. That’s down from more than 350 during the same period last year. Pottengal Mukundan is director of the International Maritime Bureau, which runs the Piracy Reporting Center. He said, “The numbers so far this year are down from the last few years. I think particularly with Somalia we have to be a little careful, and wait for the end-year statistics to see if this is a sustained trend. But so far, the numbers are encouraging.” Usually, from the middle of June to early September, there are few pirate attacks off the Somali coast. That’s due to monsoons that make sailing treacherous for the pirate vessels. The attacks and attempted hijackings generally increase toward the end of September. “We have not seen them pick up quite in the way they have picked up in past years. But there have been reports of sightings of pirate’s skiffs both in the northeast of the Arabian Sea and in the Somali Basin. So we know they’re out there,” he said. But despite the monsoons, international naval patrols off the Somali coast get a lot of the credit. “The role of the navies have been critical in bringing these attacks down because they can do things which neither private armed security nor the ship owners can do, which is to go after the mother ships and board them; remove their weapons; remove their equipment before they get into a position where they pose a threat to merchant ships. There’s also been one incident where the navies took action against a logistics base off the pirates’ shore in Somalia on the beach,” he said. | 
