"The weather has improved west of the Seychelles and pirates have realized that they have much more freedom of action down to the south because the coalition is not there in great numbers," Graeme Gibbon Brooks, the managing director of British company Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service, was quoted as saying.

One potential method of deterring piracy off the coast of Somalia is for companies to arm their ships. Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau, however, believes this approach could make matters worse.

"We feel that arming merchant vessels is not really the answer. Given the current legal framework in which merchant shipping operates, we may be creating more problems than trying to solve them," he was quoted by Radio Netherlands as saying.

Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center, said the ships' best option is to keep a round-the-clock watch and take off at the first sign of trouble.

"It's very simple. The minute they notice small boats approaching their ship, they should take evasive measures, increase speed and at the same time radio for help. A lot of ships escape by doing this," Choong said.

Ships also should install barbed wire or similar deterrents on the ship to prevent pirates from scaling the sides and boarding.

Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at the London-based think-tank Chatham House, said ships can take evasive procedures such as using water cannons to flood the engines of the pirates' skiffs.

Anti-piracy training courses, like the ones taken by some members of the US-flagged ship briefly seized last week before the crew took it back, also might help, Choong said.

(Xinhua News Agency April 14, 2009)