London (Platts)--11Mar2011/553 am EST/1053 GMT

Piracy off the coast of Somalia increased in February despite inclement weather, bucking the trend of previous years, marine services company GAC said Friday.

In February five ships were hijacked by Somali pirates, bringing the total of ships held by pirates to 35. The newly captured vessels included a VLCC off the coast of Oman.

"There was a decline in the number of incidents recorded in the Arabian Sea but Somali pirates still managed to strike closer to India than ever before, while an incident was recorded off the coast of Madagascar," GAC said in a report.

The use of motherships facilitated piracy activity despite the seasonally bad weather in the Indian Ocean, GAC said.

Although there was a decline in activity in the Arabian Sea from January, the area nonetheless "accounted for the majority of pirate attacks so far this year," GAC said.

GAC advised ships to move with high speed as "there have been no reported successful attacks on vessels traveling at over 18 knots [about 21 mph]."

Towards the end of February pirates in the harbor town of Harardhere agreed to pay 20% of the ransom money to the radical Islamist organization al-Shebaab "in exchange for being allowed to use the town as a base for their activity," the report said, noting that "this cooperative relationship may not last, given that the two groups are ideologically opposed to one another."

Other dangerous areas in February included the coast of West Africa, where "piracy activity appears to be spreading outwards from the Niger Delta," GAC said.

"Attacks here are often more violent than other piracy hotspots around the world," the report said.

Earlier this week GAC issued a maritime security alert for the Gulf of Guinea "after 14 armed pirates approached and boarded a chemical tanker off the coast of Benin."

Although the pirates abandoned plans to offload the cargo, they "stole the crew members' personal belongings and took the master and two engineers with them ashore". Later the abducted crew members were allowed to return to their ship, GAC said.

In a separate incident another chemical tanker was attacked three nautical miles off Lagos, GAC also said.

The increasing piracy incidents prompted the International Transport Workers' Federation, which numbers 201 maritime trade unions, at the end of February to appeal to seafarers "to consider avoiding working in all the affected areas -- including the Indian Ocean."

--Elza Turner, elza_turner@platts.com

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