By Barrett Sheridan

Last week, the world cheered a little when an Indian warship said it had encountered a Somali pirate “mother ship” in the Gulf of Aden and, after being fired upon, blew it to smithereens. International shippers needed a reason to celebrate. Earlier that week, Somali pirates had captured their biggest prize yet, a Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million of crude, and, with nearly a hundred attempted hijackings so far this year, were making waters around the Horn of Africa about as welcoming as a bed of nails.   

Well, put away the champagne glasses. CNN is now reporting that the sunken “mother ship” was actually a Thai fishing trawler and that, while pirates were in the process of commandeering it, the vessel still had 14 innocent fishermen onboard when it was sunk by the Indian navy. One of them, a Cambodian, spent six days adrift before being rescued by a passing ship. (One other is confirmed dead; the rest are still missing.) The sailor is now recovering in a Yemeni hospital, where he had the chance to inform the Indian navy of their mistake.

The event underscores the difficulty of tracking pirates in waters where they easily blend in with fishing trawlers or other private watercraft. “The bulk of Somali coastal dwellers are still fishermen,” says Peter Lehr, a lecturer in terrorism studies at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews. “They are now caught in the fray and being attacked by western warships. How can you divide a real fisherman and a pirate from one another? They use the same vessels.”

That means recent military operations in the region—the European Union and NATO now have forces there—might not be a very adequate defense against the pirates. So what line of defense is left? The ships themselves. Armed guards aren’t an option, because they’re too expensive for ship owners, and firefights are risky onboard ships carrying two million barrels of flammable crude oil. But there are alternatives. Hanging barbed wire around a ship’s perimeter is a simple way to dissuade would-be boarders. Electrified fences also work, but they’re out of the question on ships carrying volatile cargoes. The Long-Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, has become popular after it effectively repelled an attack on a cruise ship in 2005; it blasts a deafening wall of sound at targets up to 300 meters away. Fire hoses also do the trick at shorter ranges. Even simply gunning the engines and picking up speed can deter pirates, who look for easy prey.

It’s worth trying anything to avoid being taken hostage. Although the Somali pirates, which are currently holding 300 hostages, treat their captives fairly well—they are, after all, worth a lot of money to them—negotiations can last weeks or months. The MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 Soviet-made tanks, was captured in late September and is still being held in the port of Eyl, in the Puntland region of Somalia. “These guys are very patient people,” says Stephen Askins, a maritime lawyer at London firm Ince & Co. “One guy may be having a bad day and he’ll say, ‘I want $5 million,’ and the next guy might say, ‘Well, I’m a bit more reasonable than that.’ It’s not like buying a car. It’s a very long, drawn out process.”