A South Korean bulk carrier with 21 sailors is also being held. The crew of a Greek carrier narrowly escaped a similar fate by alerting the IMB's piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur. It directed a warship to drive off the pirates with a helicopter. Frogmen from the Commando Hubert (France's Special Boat Service) parachuted into Somali waters at night and boarded the captured yacht Carré d'As (The Four Aces), shooting dead one pirate and detaining his six slumbering comrades. The pirates had tried to extort a ransom of €1 million to release a couple on the yacht, as well as six pirates held in Paris since last spring.

Bangladesh and Nigeria are also piracy hotpots. In Nigeria, pirates operate on behalf of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (or Mend), which seeks a larger share of the oil produced in the delta. Malaysia is the centre of world expertise on piracy because of the problem that used to afflict the Straits of Malacca and which is still endemic to parts of Indonesia, although Jakarta has succeeded in cutting piratical incidents by one-third in recent years. According to a retired Dutch Shell tanker captain I recently met in Malaysia, the tsunami apparently had one generally unremarked upside in that many pirates were drowned and their ships wrecked.

More importantly, co-operation between the politically stable neighbouring littoral states, which also include Singapore, means that joint air surveillance known as the "Eye in the Sky" enables their armed forces and maritime agencies to respond with the necessary speed. The US has also given the Indonesians 10 radars to monitor pirate activity between Sumatra and peninsular Malaysia.