Somali Pirates: A Dry Spell in the Sea Pirate Business

"For Somali pirates, July was a very bad month" from CSMonitor.com:

Since June 19, Somalia’s pirates have not successfully taken any vessel hostage, and since June 26, they have not even tried to carry out a hijack.

This marks the longest unbroken stretch of peaceful shipping off Somalia since piracy emerged as a major menace in 2007, and the drop has been attributed to a greater use of armed guards on ships, international naval patrols, and the bad weather.

Weather, the interdiction of pirate "mother ships" by naval forces and the presence of armed security forces on many merchant ships might just cause an alteration in the pirate's business model . . .

On the other hand, let's see what happens when the weather gets better.

Here's the weather guesser prediction of piracy risk based on wind and waves for the next few days from ONI's Piracy Analysis and Weekly Warning Report of 1 Aug 12 (pdf):

In this case, green is good for shipping and bad for the pirates.

UPDATE: More here.