Did 2013 Mark the End of Somali Piracy?

[Time]

When five armed men in a small motorboat approached an oil tanker sailing off the coast of Somalia on Dec. 9, the crew sprang into action. They increased speed and unleashed fire hoses off the side to evade the assailants, according to a report from the International Maritime Bureau (IMB). They called for help from the British Royal Navy, which dispatched a helicopter to their location. And they summoned to the deck an armed security team traveling with the tanker, who made sure the assailants saw they were carrying weapons. The suspected pirates, presumably now deterred from their original intentions of attempting to hijack the ship and kidnap its crew, turned back. It's a testament to the success of recent antipiracy measures that hijackings of major shipments off the coast of Somalia plummeted to zero in 2013, according to the final numbers compiled by the U.S. Navy and released last week. The pirates are also trying less often: there were nine suspected attempts in 2013 in the shipping lanes that pass between Yemen and Somalia, down from seven hijackings and 25 attempts a year earlier. In 2009, there were 51 hijackings and 130 attempts, according to the Navy, including the failed attempt to take the Maersk Alabama that formed the basis of the Hollywood film Captain Phillips. (MORE: How Somalia's Fishermen Became Pirates) Attacks on shipments off the coast of Somalia, a vital sea-lane that sees nearly 25,000 passages a year, have dropped so significantly that the region is no longer Africa's hot spot of piracy. In West Africa, where oil tankers sitting just off the coast are lucrative targets for Nigerian rebel militias and regional organized crime, there were nine hijackings and 48 confrontations with pirates in 2013. In some cases, these pirates will go straight for the crew to hold for ransom: two Americans were kidnapped from their oil ship off Nigeria in October and released weeks later. "With fewer attacks off Somalia, attention has moved to the Gulf of Guinea," the IMB said in a report in October. That's a sea