Portugal Travel

{mosimage} As flagship of NATO’s Standing Naval Maritime Group One, the escort frigate had been escorting merchant ships, including one carrying radioactive material, since last month.It left for Pakistan on a planned port visit on Saturday (April 25) but will now miss courtesy port visits in Singapore and Australia to return to the Gulf in the wake of continued and escalating pirate attacks. The grey ship has been guarding vessels deemed to be at severe risk of pirate attack in their journey through the Gulf of Aden shuttling them east to west and back again along a 900km international transit corridor that splits the waters between Somalia and Yemen.

Jittery merchant ships cluster near the convoys, grateful of the presence of the warship in the dangerous waters. It is the first time Portugal has deployed a naval asset in the fight against Somali piracy.The ocean highway is used by about 23,000 merchant ships each year according to the International Maritime Bureau, and is believed to carry up to 90 percent of the sea trade between Europe and Asia. While all hell has broken loose in the Indian Ocean, it is these quiet patrols that have kept the vital sea lane open. Ship’s Captain, Commanding Officer António Alexandre said the crew had learnt a lot about operating in the heat of the tropics. “It is different working here with a sea temperature of up to 30C and relative humidity sometimes of 90 percent,” he said. “We have also learnt about the modus operandi of the pirates and what they do to attack ships. Now we are more confident and more prepared to face the pirate threat than before as we know how they work, the tactics and equipment they use.”

There are now about 16 warships patrolling the Gulf, but terror is never far from the surface of the busy waterway with its constant procession of tankers, dhows, cargo vessels and frigates. Occasional flocks of high-speed skiffs weave in and out of the traffic in pursuit of fish, scaring the daylights out of trading vessels who assume they are pirates. At sunset on a recent escort mission the Corte-Real’s convoy passed Greek-flagged oil tanker United Ambassador. Nine skiffs appeared from nowhere chasing a pod of dolphins who had found a school of fish. Despite the presence of the warship the tanker panicked, turned on its firehoses full blast and sped up to 15 knotts. Dolphins began leaping from the giant bow-wave thrown out by the fleeing tanker, delighted by the diversion.

But the merchant vessel had good reason to be afraid. After a series of successful stings last year, which netted millions in ransom dollars, the number of pirate attacks exploded. At least 300 crew members from around the world are now being held hostage by Somali pirates according to the International Maritime Bureau. Vessels most at risk of pirate attack are those that are slow or those with low-lying decks that sea-bandits can catch with a grappling hook or rope ladder, said Corte-Real’s executive officer Lieutenant-Commander Humberto Rocha. “Those are the ships that have poor manoevering capability,” he said. “But other ships also join the convoys, taking the opportunity to travel with the warship. They are more comfortable that way.”

Pirates hide among the fishing skiffs, and despite the high-tech radars and infrared binoculars on board the warship, it is impossible to tell the difference between pirate and fisherman until they make a move. To complicate matters, captains in the NATO fleet must cope with murky legal issues. So far, NATO warships have had to revert to national laws for dealing with captured pirates - in some cases leading to their immediate release. While politicians have been quick to criticise, those patrolling the Gulf have made it clear they need effective legal support to do their jobs. But whether pirates are detained or not, navy sailors believe the only real and lasting solution is onshore in Somalia. “We can try to defend commercial shipping but there is work to be done on the shore,” Lt-Cdr Rocha said. “Being a pirate is a consequence of the situation in Somalia. For the last 20 years there has been non-government and chaos.” “And ransoms make it self-reinforcing. With the ransom they have money to finance more operations - it’s a snowball effect.”