The assault on the Italian-flagged supply ship in April, in which no one was injured, was among at least six attacks that month in the Bay of Campeche, according to documents from the Mexican and American government and representatives of the Mexican merchant mariners.Īmong the other targets were vessels registered in Gibraltar, Denmark, Panama and the United Arab Emirates, officials said. “Bad actors know that resources are strained and offshore is particularly vulnerable.” “They are plenty aware of Semar’s reaction time and lack of resources to tackle this crime,” said Lee Oughton, chief operating officer of Fortress Risk Management, a Mexico-based security consultancy, referring to the Mexican Navy. Enrique Lozano Díaz, the federation’s inspector for the Gulf of Mexico, said the estimate was based on accounts from seafarers, local media coverage and emergency radio calls from vessels under attack. The International Transport Workers’ Federation, which represents seafarers, estimates that there were about 180 thefts and robberies in the Bay of Campeche last year alone. The American Naval Intelligence office said that globally “many incidents” of piracy go unreported for a variety of reasons, including a desire to avoid notifying an insurer or to avoid an investigation by law enforcement. Another 20 were recorded last year and 19 so far this year, the ministry said.īut these tallies are almost certainly undercounts, maritime experts said.
In 2018, according to ministry records, there were 16 such incidents in the Bay of Campeche. That year, there were at least 19 successful or attempted robberies or thefts of oil platforms, supply vessels and fishing boats in the Bay of Campeche, up from only four in 2016 and one in 2015, according to Mexico’s Navy Ministry, also known as Semar. In recent decades, Mexico’s territorial waters in the Gulf were mostly spared the kind of piracy that afflicted criminal hot spots like the waters off the coast of Somalia and the heavily congested seas off Southeast Asia, officials said.īut something changed in 2017, officials said. From the 16th to 19th centuries, privateers, freebooters and buccaneers prowled the waters off the Yucatán Peninsula, attacking Spanish trading vessels carrying goods bound for Spain, particularly silver from the interior of Mexico and present-day Bolivia, said Antonio García de León, who wrote a book about the history of piracy in the Gulf.
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