The Piracy Top-5

Yeah yeah, more pirate stuff.
Here's a look at the yearly, seasonal, and weekly habits of pirates in the five most active nautical zones in the world.  All regions show a pronounced shift in territory through the dozen or so years mapped, most expanding wholesale into waters empty of reported activity four years ago (except for Singapore).  Seasonality showed some interesting patterns and weekly activity was pretty interesting, too, except not as pronounced.

Some things I've noticed...

• Somali pirates really go bananas in the spring and autumn months.  Winter and summertime activity, particularly in their southernmost haunts (region 61), slows to a crawl.  Are there seasonal sorties launched in April and September and we are seeing the wave crash and wash back to base?
• Mid-week is generally the most active time (except for the ever-interesting region 61).  Three out of five regions share Wednesday as the highest volume day, while Friday is generally slow.
• Annual trends since 2001 typically skyrocket, with the exception of the waters around Singapore (region 71) where thoroughfares of piracy have constricted to just around the Singapore Straight.
• Three of the top five regions include waters newly patrolled by pirates out of Somalia with an increasing range in recent years.

For more-focused views of piracy around the Somali coast, check out this look at seasonal and weekly habits since 1978 and this look at the eruption of activity in 2008.  2008 knocked my socks off.  A sort-of-old interactive version of this data is available here.
Here is the link to the source data.


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