The 18-member Indian crew of merchant vessel Kanaya, which sank about 164 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia on Tuesday, were rescued after a US Navy Central Command (Centcom) watch officer relayed the ship’s distress call to other merchant vessels in the area. The crew were picked up by the MV Jo Betula and transferred to the port of Yanbu in Saudi Arabia where they are being questioned by local authorities.The US Embassy here confirmed the rescue, but said it was not immediately clear what had caused the sinking of the vessel. The Kanaya was carrying a large cargo of coal when it went down off the coast of Somalia, a stretch of ocean that has in the last three years alone seen an exponential increase in ‘‘events at sea’’, including gun-running and piracy. The navy here said it has been informed of the rescue mission. On January 16, another Indian vessel, a dhow Safina al Bisarat, which had been boarded and hijacked by Somalian pirates, was captured by US Navy destroyer Winston Churchill. The 16-member Indian crew were rescued and handed over to Kenyan authorities along with the 10 Somalian pirates who are now understood to be on trial.The International Maritime Bureau (IMB), which revealed statistics last month that piracy globally had flattened out, noted that, ‘‘Despite the welcome news that the volume of marine piracy is levelling, IMB warns that international shipping is still threatened by piracy in numerous regions around the globe. Somali and Nigerian waters remain particularly dangerous.’’The Pentagon is keen to get Indian officers on deputation to the Hawaii-based Pacific Command to streamline information sharing and intelligence about crime at sea, though the navy is more interested in sending officers to the Central Command, which covers the region stretching from the Horn of Africa to India, another area of immediate maritime security concern.
