As the 36,000 ships that bottleneck into the Gulf of Aden each year try to dodge marauding pirates and keep a lid on insurance premiums, an astonishing array of inventions has cropped up on the flourishing market.

With obstacles remaining to the deployment of onboard security personnel, a myriad of hoses, nets, lasers, radars -- from million-dollar high-tech systems to gadgets straight out of a Harry Potter wizard shop -- have been developed.

"Some of this will, I think, find a place in the market because it answers the need for companies to do something, short of arming crews or bringing armed security onboard," said security expert Jake Allen.

"Never mind that many of these inventions don't work or are easily defeated by pirates," added Allen, a senior risk advisor with US-based The NoLu Group and the author of an ebook entitled "Security Contracting".

With very few companies willing to incur the extra cost of opting for the safer route around the Cape of Good Hope, some shipping firms will be under increasing legal pressure to take basic security precautions.

So it's gadgets galore at scores of specialised security fairs across the world, where start-ups run by navy veterans all offer the ultimate pirate-proof invention with a fancy acronym.

One company peddles the Anti-Pirate Water Cannon System and another markets "non-lethal slippery (or anti-traction) foam" as the trick that will frustrate pirates even after they successfully board their prey.

A British company markets a net to snare the pirates' propellers for 450 dollars (330 euros) per metre without shipping.

Other solutions include evolutions of age-old hidden-spikes-and-hot-oil defensive tactics, such as 9,000-volt electrical wiring or a "hot water curtain" to defend the deck from grapnel-wielding sea-jackers.

There are various cheap DIY ways of "rigging" a ship with nets, traps, barbed wire and dummy security guards.

Maritime security forums on the Internet are awash with suggestions for outlandish contraptions such as glue cannons, robot anti-pirate boats and 50-dollar star-pointing green lasers that cause "reversible eye damage".

More seriously considered -- and costly -- solutions developed by Europe's largest defence company BAE include dazzle guns that incapacitate assailants 1,000 yards (metres) away and a state-of-the art early warning radar system.

However there is a dearth of recorded occurrences during which any of these devices were successfully used against Somali pirates.

One exception is the long range acoustic device (LRAD), a crowd-control sonic blaster that can be used to convey messages or emit unpleasant "deterrent tones". It was also used at the Pittsburgh G-20 meeting last year.

The legality of many of these "less lethal" weapons is also contested and Hans Tino Hansen, managing director of Denmark-based Risk Intelligence, argued that the perceived market for such systems may be higher than the real one.

"From our customer base, we can see that systems that have dual functionality are preferred to security only systems -- this could be remote controlled thermal imaging systems or real water canons," he said.

"In the ever-growing range of non-lethal weapons on offer, some are much less effective than the blurb tries to convey and can even be dangerous when they are operated," said Olivier Halloui, operations manager at French-based maritime safety firm Surtymar.

"The end goal of protection measures is to delay the pirates' boarding and commandeering of the ship. Simple and cheap set-ups can turn out to be effective if a suspicious boat is spotted early," he explained.

The naval missions patrolling Somali waters regularly remind seafarers that ships respecting recommended corridors and best management practices laid out by the industry rarely get attacked.

earlier related report
Armed Spanish trawler repels pirate attack
Brussels (AFP) March 4, 2010 - Armed, private security guards aboard a Spanish trawler repelled an attack by pirates using rocket-propelled grenades in the Indian Ocean on Thursday, naval forces and Spanish sources said.

The European Union's naval mission to the waters off Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, said that "earlier this morning, 4 March, the 2,100-tonne Spanish fishing vessel Albacan was attacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean.

"The Albacan, owned by Albacora, and registered in Cadiz, was fishing half way between the Seychelles and the Kenyan coast (off Mombasa) when it was approached by two pirate skiffs."

A statement by EU-NAVFOR said one of the skiffs "fired a rocket-propelled grenade that exploded on the deck of the fishing vessel," but that "private security armed guards" fired back "over the heads of the pirate skiff" and the attackers fled.

"All crewmembers are unharmed," the naval mission added.

The Spanish fisheries federation said the attack took place at 0730 GMT some 350 nautical miles (650 kilometres) off Kenya, with Spanish media citing an exchange of gunfire and a fire, rapidly extinguished, in the kitchen caused by the grenade.

Last year, 16 Spanish crew members of a tuna trawler, the Alakrana, were held for more than a month by Somali pirates before a four-million-dollar (2.9-million-euro) ransom was paid.

The Spanish government has authorised the use of armed guards, as opposed to assigning military personnel the way France has, for instance.

Spain will send a navy ship with 100 crew members on board to the region before the end of the month to help patrol the Somali ports from where the pirates depart from, the Spanish defence ministry said.

The country already has a navy frigate and a maritime patrol plane in the Gulf of Aden to help dissuade pirates from attacking ships.

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