Taking advantage . . .

Taking advantage of Somalia's lack of a government, foreign fleets descended on the Somalian coast, often within the territorial limit, and began overfishing stocks that coastal communities had recently begun to harvest for themselves. With no coast guard to protect their interests and no voice in the international community, local fishermen began seizing and ransoming foreign fishing vessels and their crews. This retributive privateering quickly attracted the interest of local warlords, terrorists, and others who expanded the scope of their operations to seize piratically and indiscriminately anything from container ships and tankers to cruise ships and private yachts regardless of flag. While this has become an obvious criminal problem, the underlying cause, namely illegal fishing, is a more disturbing threat to the global commons.

Lincoln Paine, The Sea and Civilization. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 595.