A BBC profile of Somalia says that country, after decades of pure chaos, has been “inching toward stability.” It looks like no one has told the pirates that infest the ocean around the small nation on the horn of Africa, though—in their efforts to get whatever money they can in ransoms for ship crews and cargo they’ve become such a huge problem for freighters that some shipping lines are hiring actual damn security forces.
As you see in the video above, those security guys get put through their paces, too. In this video made on a bodycam, we watch as one guard behind a bulwark of sandbags pours lead down on small approaching pirate boats—and the pirates appear to fire back.
It looks as though the Somalian pirate menace has even created a niche within the private security industry itself. The 2015 promotional video above for Seagull Maritime Security proves these outfits have been meeting the need for a few years now.
So while the shipping industry has clearly gotten wise since the events that inspired the 2013 Tom Hanks film Captain Phillips, it doesn’t look like the pirates are necessarily learning any lessons—they’ve even attacked military transports.
Of course, if they keep that up then eventually there won’t be too many of them left.