Piracy is the hottest issue in the industry at the moment with 15 vessels held and 227 hostages. We have taken the initiative in the Safety4Sea.com to organize a survey regarding Piracy and the industry people perception towards initiatives implemented so far. We are planning to distribute the analysis and feedback from this survey to all the key industry associations and the press on completion of the survey. Besides, the international community in real life failed to treat Somalia problem. This can be attributed to a number of reasons, such as the lack of political will.

Safety4Sea.com Anti- Piracy survey Participation

The anti-piracy survey started back in July 2011. Our key objective is to raise awareness, share ideas and forward feedback. There are approx 500 persons participating to the survey so far. Most of them are working in management level and are in the industry for 6 or more years. Most of them have sailed on board vessels and are Europeans.

The Results So far

Participants were presented with a number of antipiracy measures and were asked to rank their effectiveness. So far, we can tell that people seem to consider crew training an effective measure. Then we have armed or unarmed guards. Many have a rather conflicting approach on the issue. Considering unarmed guards, many of the participants think that this is not an effective measure, more or less; this in my view is not true. On the other hand people consider armed guards effective, maybe because we have had NO incident so far of a successful high jacking event with armed guards on board. Finally, many people think as things will get worse in the next few years, as they got worse in the past. Many people think that we improve the understanding of the situation; however the international community is not taking the necessary steps in order to minimize the problem.

There are however some trends identified so far. For example negotiation becomes a key issue. You have to have some sort of negotiating expertise within the company. Then all operators are investing in the improvement of awareness and best management practices and are implementing extensive security systems, after - and this after is really important - a piracy incident. There will be a full analysis of all the survey items by early November and the survey will be further communicated as necessary.

Apostolos Belokas

Principal Consultant & CEO, IBS Marine Consulting Group

Founder & Managing Editor, Safety4Sea.com

The preliminary results of the Safety4Sea Anti Piracy Survey have been presented to the audience during the 2nd Safety4Sea Forum.

You can view Apostolos' presentation video during 2nd Safety4Sea Forum