Piracy is one of the most frequent maritime threats. However, despite the
importance of how maritime piracy is to be reduced, it is substantially less investigated
than maritime safety. Piracy off Somalia is the most investigated case of piracy, but those
results are not necessarily generalizable. Piracy off West Africa has been shown to be
more diverse, successful and dangerous. This study investigates and analyses piracy off
West Africa with the aim to understand how different operations and security measures
affect the consequences of piracy. This study has identified several different intents and
shows that most attacks are relatively close to shore and correspond to areas of high ship
density. Attacks with the intent of theft at night-time are generally performed close to
shore, and more complicated attacks against ships under way are more common during
daytime and farther from shore. Five types of measures are found to have high
effectiveness if the attack is detected during approach; after boarding, only two measures
have high effectiveness. Of the effective measures, it can be concluded that all but one
are dependent on detecting the attack. Therefore, detecting the pirates is key but must be
accompanied by a set of measures because no measure alone can protect a ship given the
operational conditions off West Africa. The risks associated with piracy off West Africa
are estimated to be of the same magnitude as the risks posed by Somali piracy at its peak.

EB00000004106K

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• Piracy off West Africa from 2010 to 2014: an analysis