PIRACY on the high seas is finally being fought with modern technology. Faced
with rising numbers of raids on their cargo ships鈥攎ainly in the waters of
South-East Asia鈥擩apanese shipping companies have decided that enough is
enough.
Maritime piracy has been a scourge since the days of the Roman Empire, and
the tools of the trade have hardly changed. The pirates鈥� usual modus operandi is
to pull alongside freighters at night and throw grappling hooks onto their deck
rails.
The countermeasures are not much more sophisticated. When the Japanese
icebreaker Shirase sailed for Antarctica last November, for example, its
anti-piracy technology consisted of ropes鈥攖o tie the doors shut as it
passed through the main danger areas off Indonesia鈥攁nd strategically
placed hoses to wash down any pirates who ventured aboard.
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But a five-fold increase in attacks against Japanese ships over the past four
years has forced the industry to rethink. Last year there were more than 300
pirate attacks around the world, according to the London-based International
Maritime Bureau (IMB). Of those attacks, 34 were against Japanese ships.
At the end of July, 15 Japanese vessels were fitted with a new system called
Toranomon鈥斺�漈iger鈥檚 Gate鈥濃�攖hat can detect when grappling irons are
thrown onto the deck. It consists of a taut wire strung along the deck rail and
attached to a mirror. If the wire is stretched or cut by a grappling hook, the
mirror will move, breaking a light beam that passes through an optical fibre to
a sensor. The sensor in turn triggers an alarm and switches on floodlights on
deck. Miki Ito of the Nippon Foundation, which helped develop Toranomon, says:
鈥淚t was first tested in Tokyo Bay in a mock pirate attack on the port side of a
freighter. The alarm worked as planned. Now 15 freighters are trying it out for
谤别补濒.鈥�
As a second line of defence, the Japanese shipping company Nippon Yusen
Kaisha (NYK) has developed an improved version of a tracking system to raise the
alarm. Its existing system, called Fleet Remote Monitoring (FROM), contacts each
ship six times a day, receiving an automated signal back that gives the ship鈥檚
position, speed and direction. But pirates know about FROM and often disable it
as soon as they board. So several NYK vessels are now field-testing a system
called the Seajack Alarm, which alerts the ship owner by e-mail and cellphone
when a vessel fails to respond to the FROM signal.
Another approach has been taken by the IMB: it has created a tracking system
that鈥檚 so small鈥攁bout the size of a shoebox鈥攖hat pirates can鈥檛 find
it to disable it. Called Shiploc, even the crew don鈥檛 know where it is, says IMB
deputy director Jayant Abhyanka, so pirates can鈥檛 force them to reveal its
whereabouts.
