Fish

For some time, Somali pirates have argued that foreign overfishing in Somali waters is responsible for this decade's increase in piratical activity. Pirates, according to the argument, were acting in the absence of a formal Somali navy or coast guard to secure Somali territorial waters. There's a germ of truth to this argument, as Somalia's inability to patrol its territorial waters or police overfishing almost certainly reduced opportunities for young Somalis, driving them towards piracy. Of course, the argument can be taken too seriously; it was never clear precisely how the seizure of food aid ships or Saudi oil tankers could resolve the difficulties faced by the Somali fishing industry. However, according to the AP's Jason Straziuso, Somali piracy seems to have had its intended effect on fish stocks:

In past years, illegal commercial trawlers parked off Somalia's coast and scooped up the ocean's contents. Now, fishermen on the northern coast of neighboring Kenya say, the trawlers are not coming because of pirates.

"There is a lot of fish now, there is plenty of fish. There is more fish than people can actually use because the international fishermen have been scared away by the pirates," said Athman Seif, the director of the Malindi Marine Association...

Fishermen and sportsmen say they've been catching more fish than ever. Howard Lawrence-Brown, who owns Kenya Deep Sea Fishing, said fishing stocks over the last year have been up "enormously — across all species."

"We had the best marlin season ever last year," said Lawrence-Brown, who owns Kenya Deep Sea Fishing. "The only explanation is that somebody is not targeting them somewhere. ... There's definitely no question about it, the lack of commercial fishing has made a difference..."

Kenya's sports fisherman say the pirates appear to have had a hugely positive effect on their industry. Angus Paul, whose family owns the Kingfisher sports fishing company, said that over the past season clients on his catch-and-release sports fishing outings averaged 12 or 13 sail fish a day. That compares with two or three in previous years.

Somali pirates, Paul said, are a group of terrorists, "but as long as they can keep the big commercial boats out, not fishing the waters, then it benefits a lot of other smaller people."

It remains to be seen whether the improvement in fishing opportunities will have any independent effect on the frequency of pirate attacks. Acknowledging that foreign overfishing may have played a role in the explosion of piracy doesn't mean that other factors weren't at least as important, and doesn't mean that piracy will cease if fishing becomes lucrative again. Much of the "start up cost" of piracy has already been paid through the development of transnational networks for handling finance, collecting intelligence, and recruiting manpower, which means that piracy may remain a sensible economic choice even after the conditions that allowed it to develop change.