Somali pirate activity has shifted fast in spring 2026. On 8 April, the Joint Maritime Information Centre still assessed piracy risk in the Gulf of Aden, the Somali Basin and the wider Indian Ocean as low, with no confirmed active pirate action group in the basin. By 30 April, that same picture had changed to severe.
The reason is blunt. Pirates are again hijacking dhows and using them as motherships. That gives them range, cover and choice. By 7 May, JMIC said three merchant vessels were being held by Somali pirates, while a hijacked dhow was likely supporting extended-range pirate action group operations across the Somali Basin.
Somali pirate activity and the return of motherships
The latest warnings matter because the rise was abrupt. JMIC went from low threat on 8 April to severe by 30 April, and it said pirate groups had already shown offshore reach, with a tanker reporting a suspicious approach about 500 nautical miles east of Somalia. On 7 May, JMIC still rated the Somali Coast and Somali Basin severe. That is the clearest sign of a renewed spike, not a one-off boarding.
Official security bulletins now describe the mothership model in plain terms. The Republic of the Marshall Islands said hijacked fishing dhows are being used as pirate motherships, allowing long-range attacks, with one 2025 hijacking roughly 600 nautical miles off Somalia and attempted activity reported out to about 900 nautical miles. The same advisory said the 21 April hijacking of Honour 25 was the first successful commercial tanker hijacking in the Somali Basin since 2017, while the current cycle now mixes near-shore hijacks with offshore mothership-launched approaches. EUNAVFOR had already confirmed that pattern in November 2025, when an Iranian-flagged dhow served as the mother ship in the Hellas Aphrodite case.
Honour 25 and the Pakistan contact chain
The timeline around Honour 25 is unusually well documented. EUNAVFOR says Puntland Maritime Police first reported the hijacking of fishing vessel ALKHARY 2 on 20 April. On 21 April, Atalanta then identified a piracy incident involving the motor tanker Honour 25, with the vessel last known about 28 nautical miles southeast of ALKHARY 2. A Japanese maritime patrol aircraft later confirmed the tanker inside Somali territorial waters, and on 22 April Puntland police said the fishing vessel had been released while the pirate action group stayed aboard Honour 25.
Pakistan’s official position
Came through its Foreign Office on 30 April. In that briefing, Islamabad said Honour 25 was carrying oil to Puntland and had 17 crew members, including 10 Pakistanis. Pakistan’s embassy in Djibouti, which covers Somalia, contacted Somali authorities and learned the vessel was anchored off Eyl. The same briefing added three critical details: Somalia’s foreign ministry had sent written assurances, Puntland authorities were part of the engagement, and the pirates were in contact with the local owner.
That official channel did not solve the family information gap. A family account published in Pakistan said the first warning came as a short text on 21 April saying, in effect, “Pirates are here.” Communication then stopped for days. On 24 April, one family reported a short video call from captivity showing crew in cramped conditions. By 5 May, relatives were telling Al Jazeera that calls had become rare, monitored and brief, and that crew members were begging their families to push the company and the government to act.
The clearest public sign of a negotiation path came through a non-state intermediary. Arab News reported that the Ansar Burney Trust had established contact with both pirates and crew members. In a recorded call shared with the paper, a pirate representative urged the group to pressure the Pakistani government to negotiate.
By 9 May, the welfare picture had become the central fact. Pakistani crew told relatives they had almost no food left, were eating boiled rice once a day, had run out of medicine, and had no clean drinking water. The pirates allowed short five-minute calls, but families still asked Islamabad to appoint one committee and one focal person for updates. That request says a lot. In hostage cases, fragmented contact can harm trust almost as much as silence.
