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Nairobi, Kenya. Somali pirates raked in an estimated $60 million in 2009, but the ransom hunters have also spurred a much larger industry of ship protection devices.

As the 36,000 ships that crowd into the Gulf of Aden each year try to dodge marauding pirates and keep a lid on insurance premiums, an astonishing array of inventions has cropped up on the flourishing market.

With obstacles remaining to the deployment of onboard security personnel, myriad hoses, nets, lasers, radars — from million-dollar high-tech systems to gadgets out of a wizard shop — have been developed.

“Some of this will, I think, find a place in the market because it answers the need for companies to do something, short of arming crews or bringing armed security on board,” expert Jake Allen said.

“Never mind that many of these inventions don’t work or are easily defeated by pirates,” said Allen, a risk adviser and author of “Security Contracting.”

With very few companies willing to incur the extra cost of opting for the safer route around the Cape of Good Hope, some shipping firms will be under increasing legal pressure to take basic security precautions.

So it is gadgets galore on display at scores of specialized security fairs across the world.

One company peddles the Anti-Pirate Water Cannon System and another markets “non-lethal slippery (or antitraction) foam” as the trick that will frustrate pirates even after they successfully board their prey.

A British company markets a net to snare the pirates’ propellers, for $450 per meter without shipping. Other solutions are 9,000-volt electrical wiring or a “hot-water curtain” to defend the ship’s deck from grapnel-wielding sea-jackers.

There are various cheap do-it-yourself ways of “rigging” a ship with nets, traps, barbed wire and dummy security guards.

Maritime security forums on the Internet are awash with suggestions for outlandish contraptions such as glue cannons and robot anti-pirate boats.

More seriously considered — and costly — solutions developed by Europe’s largest defense company BAE include dazzle guns that incapacitate assailants 1,000 meters away and a state-of-the art early-warning radar system.

However, there is a dearth of recorded occurrences during which any of these devices were successfully employed.

One exception is the long-range acoustic device, a crowd-control sonic blaster that can be used to convey messages or emit unpleasant “deterrent tones.” It was also used at the Pittsburgh Group of 20 meeting last year.

The legality of many of these “less lethal” weapons is contested and Hans Tino Hansen, managing director of Denmark-based Risk Intelligence, argued that the perceived market for such systems may be higher than the real one. “From our customer base, we can see that systems that have dual functionality are preferred to security-only systems — this could be remote-controlled thermal imaging systems or real water canons,” he said.

Olivier Halloui, operations manager at maritime-safety company Surtymar, said: “In the ever-growing range of non-lethal weapons on offer, some are much less effective than the blurb tries to convey and can even be dangerous when they are operated. The end goal of protection measures is to delay the pirates’ boarding and commandeering of the ship.

“Simple and cheap set-ups can turn out to be effective if a suspicious boat is spotted early.”



Agence France-Presse