Mace and Vomit: The Latest in Anti-Pirate Tech

[Feuer Frei!]

There’s no shortage of ideas on how technology can solve the Somali piracy problem.
Folks have called for zapping pirates with lasers, pounding their eardrums with sonic blasters and spotting them in advance with mini-drones.
Now two companies are offering new solutions to keep pirates at bay: blinding them with pepper spray and incapacitating them by making them hurl.
The maritime security company Shipboard Defense Systems has partnered with the makers of Mace to offer an industrial strength version of the hand-held pepper spray can for merchant vessels. The system, Rainstorm, gives boarding pirates a pressured shower of up to 300 gallons worth of tingly, piquant Mace. The chemical’s effects last for about 45 minutes and include “paralysis of the larynx,” “intense eye irritation” and an “acute burning sensation,” among others.
Another company, Maritime Security Company, LLC, is selling a somewhat similar product as part of a package of anti-pirate defenses. Maritime Security’s Triton Shield system offers ships an increasingly aggressive range of products and services beginning with a network of security cameras.
In the event pirates are able to get close enough to try and board, Triton offers a high-pressure hose system to push them off and an unnamed chemical that, when sprayed onto pirates, makes the vomit. (Triton also provides armed guards and a safe room in the event its other measures fail.)

Shipboard Defense Systems and Maritime Security’s less-than-lethal products all use technological riffs on the shipping industry’s best management practices (BMP3) to amp up anti-hijacking defenses.
The Mace shower, puke spray and high-pressure hoses operate on the same principle as BMP3’s call to use ships’ fire hoses and foam monitors in the event of a boarding attempt. It can be difficult for pirates to board a moving ship from a skiff using grappling hooks and ladders. Hosing them with something slippery, heavy, itchy or nauseating helps make the journey up that much more tricky.
But can the less-than-lethal aspects of these systems really best pirates armed with RPGs and Kalashnikovs? It’s important to remember that though pirates often outgun shippers, their arms don’t always translate into successful hijackings. The International Maritime Bureau’s 2010 report on piracy recorded 219 attacks by Somali pirates, 49 of which — less than a quarter — resulted in hijackings.
Many of the ships who get away do so with the help of nothing more sophisticated than a vigilant lookout, increased speed and the use of fire hoses.


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