Thousands of dolphins block Somali pirates

BEIJING, April 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Thousands of dolphins blocked the suspected Somali pirate ships when they were trying to attack Chinese merchant ships passing the Gulf of Aden, the China Radio International reported on Monday.

The Chinese merchant ships escorted by a China's fleet sailed on the Gulf of Aden when they met some suspected pirate ships. Thousands of dolphins suddenly leaped out of water between pirates and merchants when the pirate ships headed for the China's.

The suspected pirates ships stopped and then turned away. The pirates could only lament their littleness befor the vast number of dolphins. The spectacular scene continued for a while.

China initiated its three-ship escort task force on Dec. 26 last year after the United Nations Security Council called on countries to patrol gulf and waters off Somalia, one of the world's busiest marine routes, where surging piracy endangered intercontinental shipping.

China's first fleet has escorted 206 vessels, including 29 foreign merchant vessels, and successfully rescued three foreign merchant ships from pirate attacks.

About 20 percent of Chinese merchant ships passing through the waters off Somalia were attacked by pirates from January to November in 2008, before the task force was deployed.

A total of seven ships, either owned by China or carrying Chinese cargo and crew, were hijacked.

Tianyu No. 8, a Chinese fishing vessel with 16 Chinese and eight foreign sailors aboard, was captured by Somali pirates on Nov. 14 and released in early February.

The second fleet of Chinese escort ships arrived at the Gulf of Aden on Monday to replace the first fleet.

Great Photo at link!
(Xinhua and Cri contributed to the story)
http://www.chinaview.cn:80/index.htm

The U.S. Navy Seals, have Dolphins AND real true-life SEALS trained to defend harbors, retrieve sensative equipment, places mines and explosives to shipping and KILL any underwater enemy intuders.

They are very smart.

disguised as dolphins!

I would not fuck with China, were I a Somali maritime warlord or a landlubbing Taliban/Al Quaeda/group du jour or generic warlord. China has the manpower to have enormous misunderstandings.

what are they gonna do? walk there?

STABBING PIRATES!!! FUCK YEAH!

The dolphins are on the right side, they know enough to protect.

Protect the Chinese ships? Yeah.......
We have barracuda.
Large mouth bass.
Back off

China has to do something with all that tainted wheat?

fast boats? lots of guts? dark of night? radar blockers? what's the modus operandi?

disguise themselves as fishermen, other times they will hail a tanker and draw down on it with an RPG.

A lot of these merchant vessels have very small crews so it doesn't take much to get the upper hand--a few weapons will do it. Because of international law, they can't carry much in the way of weaponry, either. In some cases (fuel tankers) it doesn't make sense to do so, either.

CAPT Phillips on the Alabama did the right thing--transfer control of the ship to engineering. Had not the pirates taken the one hostage and left the vessel, the ship would have been piloted from the engineering department all the way to Mombasa.

That was so cool haha.