Mariners Develop High Tech Pirate Repellents

Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that owners of ships that ply the dangerous waters near Somalia are looking at options to repel pirates including slippery foam, lasers, electric fences, water cannons and high-intensity sound — almost anything except guns. One defense is the Force 80 squirt gun with a 3-inch nozzle that can send 1,400 gallons a minute 100 yards in any direction. 'It is a tremendous force of water that will knock over anything in its path and will also flood a pirate's ship very quickly,' says Roger Barrett James of the the Swedish company Unifire. Next is the Mobility Denial System, a slippery nontoxic foam that can be sprayed on just about any surface making it impossible to walk or climb even with the aid of a harness. The idea would be to spray the pirate's vessel as it approached, or to coat ropes, ladders, steps and the hull of the ship that's under attack. The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a high-powered directional loudspeaker allows a ship to hail an approaching vessel more than a mile away. 'Knowing that they've lost the element of surprise is half the battle,' says Robert Putnam of American Technology Corp. The LRAD has another feature — a piercing "deterrent tone" that sounds a bit like a smoke detector alarm with enough intensity to cause extreme pain and even permanent hearing loss for anyone directly in the beam that comes from the device. But Capt. John Konrad, who blogs for the Web site Gcaptain.com, says no anti-pirate device is perfect. 'The best case scenario is that you find these vessels early enough that you can get a Navy ship detached to your location and let them handle the situation.'"

Comments

The Reason They Don't Want Guns

[dracphelan]

Due to activities of privateers and pirates in the past, many nations have laws against armed merchant vessels being allowed in their harbors and/or waters. This is the reason the companies want devices that won't be considered weapons by these countries, Afterall, what good does it do to arm the vessel if it can't dock anywhere.

Re:pirate repellents

[Lord Ender]

Oh spare us the BS. The pirates aren't hijacking fishing vessels or garbage barges to police their waters. They're hijacking cargo ships and ransoming them. They're doing it 100% for greed, which is motivated by a lack of consequences (little rule of law there) and lack of alternatives (crap economy there).

When they stop taking tankers and start taking fishing boats and garbage barges, you can speak in their defense. Until then, STFU.

Re:pirate repellents

[vertinox]

This really has to be the cheapest, most effective method - so there must be some, likely political, reason that it's not being used. Much of the issue with arming crew members seems to revolve around 1) training and 2) what to do with the weapons in whatever random port the ship ends up at where weapons aren't welcome.

International Maritime treaties forbid merchant ships from army themselves during peacetime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_passage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea

If ships armed themselves, then they waive the "right of innocent passage" and when they are out of international waters, then they might run into problem with the local authorities.