The French center of expertise dedicated to maritime security, the MICA Center, announced today that piracy statistics are down to 300 acts of piracy and brigandage, the lowest figure since the statistics began in 2008.
These statistics are published annually by the Maritime Information Cooperation & Awareness Center, based in France.
Despite the drop, the center of expertise said there is still a threat to maritime security in many forms such as drug trafficking, smuggling, brigandage, and others.
The International Maritime Bureau (IMB), based in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) also confirmed in a report published in October that acts of piracy are at their lowest level since 1992.
Similarly, only three ships were pirated in 2022, compared to 26 in 2019, in the waters of the Gulf of Guinea, considered among the most dangerous in the world for piracy, and the number of people kidnapped has dropped from 146 in 2019 to two in the past year.
A commander of the MICA Center told the press that this is a first in maritime piracy statistics but urged caution anyway, detailing that pirate groups are still present but they may be moving on to less risky money-making activities or to acts of brigandage.