Maritime experts recently have noticed a new development in the gulf — the pirates' use of “mother ships,” large oceangoing trawlers carrying fleets of speedboats which are then deployed when a new prize is encountered. “They launch these boats and they're like wild dogs,” said Noel Choong, the head of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur. “They attack the ship from the port, from starboard, from all points, shooting, scaring the captain, firing RPGs and forcing the ship to stop.” The Somali pirates usually attack in small speedboats, using ropes and ladders to climb a ship's hull and seize the crew. Once they have a ship, military action to free it holds dangers. They are trained fighters, heavily armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, GPS even, and they have the crews as hostages. There are some countermeasures the merchant ships can use when approaching pirates are spotted. Fire-retardant foam or huge blasts of water can be sprayed from the ship to douse the would-be hijackers. Once pirates get aboard, however, the ship is theirs, because crews on commercial vessels are rarely armed, according to Choong and other maritime experts. “They are not mentally or physically fit enough to handle weapons,” he said.
