Perhaps only one tenth of maritime piracy incidents are reported. Furthermore, though there have been a recent spate of high profile Somalia related hijackings, Indonesia, not Somalia, is the most dangerous area, piracy wise--

Though the idea of having a shoot out with pirates on the high seas delights a number of you, arming crews in one way or another is not going to happen for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that a few random sparks on an oil tanker could blow it up real good.

Solutions that work are rather prosaic--rolls of barbed wire across the stern, water hoses, iPods amplified to the threshold of pain, sand independent security specialists to keep watch--

Maritime piracy has been going on for a long time, and on a large scale.   For some reason, until very recently, we've tended to ignore it, and we get more agitated about the "piracy" of music files than the more tangible seizures of ships, and the murders and violence that accompany them. Go figure.