Twenty-First Century Pirates

Twenty-First Century Pirates

It's early in the morning, you load your boat, and set off into the water, armed, and hopeful. With a few others, you sail into the open gulf looking for a ransom. A tankard, a cargo ship, anything will do. After losing your job piracy was the only option available to you, you don't want to do it, but you must keep your family alive. Piracy, once a serious problem, has resurfaced worse in the Gulf of New Guinea. These pirates are very similar, but many would wonder, why has pirating resurfaced at this point, and why in New Guinea?

Before one can know how to stop piracy, they must first know what makes a pirate, and what is a pirate today? Somalia is thought of as the hub for piracy in the world, but since 2015 Somalia has fallen in piracy rates. The new hub of piracy is actually the gulf of new guinea, described by some as “the new place to be for pirates” (Yomi). It is not known why Somalia has fallen in piracy, but the closest idea created is that they just stopped wanting to be pirates. The job is also lucrative for the pirates, with each one making over 10 thousand dollars a haul, and with the average age of an African pirate being 25, the idea of pirating seems even more compelling, (Wattson). But the main reason the average man is pirating isn't because of the money, or the new location, it is due to a problem affecting Africa and the world as a whole, over fishing, (Luce).

Fishing is the most common practice in New Guinea, so it's no surprise that eventually the fish would “run out”. SO many people fish in the Gulf of New Guinea that the amount of big fish have decreased substantially over the past 5 years, (Yomi). The economic effects have been massive as a result. People cannot feed their families, they have nowhere to go. Desperate and Hungry, previous gulf fisherman turned to Pirating. Being in the water is all they know, so it’s only natural they would gravitate to pirating.

But what can we do to stop piracy? Force, ignore them, treaties, all ideas given out. Force was used on the Somali pirates which worked to a degree of success, but it is merely stopping the problem of pirates, not why people are becoming pirates. We can no longer ignore these pirates either, for they are starting to hinder the production of large scale companies and manufacturers. And signing a treaty is an impossibility. No, to fix the problem, we must stop these men from becoming a pirate in the first place. We must reduce or stop over-fishing in the gulf of new guinea. If we can reverse this problem, then fisherman can once again go back to fishing, and hopefully, the amount of pirates in Africa would dwindle once again (Luce).

In the twenty-first century, force is becoming less and less of an answer to problems facing us today. And as such we must learn to find new ways to stop incoming issues, pirates being one of them. If we simply use force to fix the pirate problem in New Guinea, it will only lead to starving civilians and fish-less Waters

Works Cited

Kazeem, Yomi. "As Somali Pirates Lay Low, West Africa’s Waters Are Now the Continent’s Most Dangerous." Quartz. Quartz, 06 May 2016. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.

Luce, Dan De. "Why Is It So Hard to Stop West Africa’s Vicious Pirates?" Foreign Policy. 26 Sept. 2016. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.

Bill Wattson. "Average Ransom Payment and Total Earnings for Somali Pirates." Havocscope. 14 Feb. 2015. Web. 07 Mar. 2017.

John Tarson. "The Ungoverned Seas." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 27 Nov. 2014. Web. 07 Mar. 2017.

"Piracy in West Africa | Africa Renewal Online." United Nations. United Nations, Web. 08 Mar. 2017.

Deutsche Welle. "West Africa's Tough Battle with Piracy."  Web. 08 Mar. 2017.