Recent Increase in Piracy

There are now more than 17 pirates.

Pirate attacks around the world tripled in the decade between 1993 and 2003. In 2003 alone there were 445 actual or attempted attacks in which 16 people were killed.

In the first three months of 2006, there were 61 successful or attempted attacks, compared to 56 incidents in the same period last year.

At least 63 people have been taken hostage this year—twice the number of hostages taken in the same period last year.

If the chart on the previous post is correct, this explains the cold winter we just had.

Check out these pirates on the National Geographic website. They're not signing any movie deals with Disney. There's also an interesting article about modern pirate technology here, at Popular Mechanics.