Reported incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships in Asia fell by more than half over the first nine months of 2026, according to the regional body that counts them.
The ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre, which collates reports from its member states, recorded 50 incidents between January and September, against 120 in the same period of 2025, a decrease of 58 per cent. The figures appear in its third quarterly report of the year.
Two of the 50 were classified as piracy, both in the South China Sea. The remaining 48 were armed robbery against ships.
The Straits of Malacca and Singapore remain the centre's main area of focus. Twenty-three incidents were reported there, 22 in the Singapore Strait and one in the Malacca Strait, making up 46 per cent of the Asian total. ReCAAP said the situation in the straits had continued to improve markedly during the first nine months of the year, while advising shipmasters and crews to remain vigilant when transiting the area.
The improvement was shared across several areas previously affected, among them India, Indonesia, the straits and Vietnam. The Philippines moved the other way, with 12 incidents reported between January and September against two in the same period last year. The Philippine Coast Guard, which is also the country's ReCAAP focal point, has continued coordinated measures to address thefts on board ships.
ReCAAP sorts each incident into one of four categories by significance. Of the 50, five were Category 2, 16 were Category 3 and 29 were Category 4, the least significant. No Category 1 incidents were reported in either 2025 or the first nine months of 2026.
On that basis the severity profile was broadly consistent year on year. Category 4 accounted for 58 per cent of incidents in 2026 and 52 per cent in 2025, with the balance in Categories 2 and 3.
The centre has urged the littoral states of the Sulu Sea to strengthen surveillance and enforcement across their internal waters, archipelagic waters and territorial seas, to respond promptly to reports, and to extend cooperation through joint patrols and the sharing of information.
Shipmasters transiting the area are advised to remain vigilant, to adopt preventive measures against unauthorised boarding, and to report incidents and the presence of suspicious small boats to the nearest coastal state rescue coordination centre and to their vessel's flag state.
The report contains two figures of 58 per cent. One is the fall in incidents from January to September, year on year. The other is the share of this year's incidents that fall into the mildest of the four categories.
They are unrelated quantities. One is a rate of change over time; the other is the composition of a total. Our analysts at the Department of Unnecessary Research have nonetheless set them side by side, as the report does, and find the coincidence difficult to let go of.
Read literally, the arithmetic is tidy to the point of suspicion. Incidents fell 58 per cent. Of what remains, 58 per cent is barely anything at all. On the page, the fifty-eight that left and the fifty-eight that stayed look very much like the same fifty-eight.
This newspaper therefore advances the conservation hypothesis. Severity is not declining so much as relocating into the least significant category, whose share has risen from 52 per cent to 58 per cent across two years while the most significant category has stayed empty. Nothing has reached Category 1 since at least the start of 2025. Category 4 now holds 29 of the 50.
Pressed to its conclusion, the model predicts an end state in which every incident is Category 4 and the total is therefore 100 per cent mild, at which point the decline will have completed itself without the number of incidents needing to fall any further.
Fifty incidents, down fifty-eight per cent, of which fifty-eight per cent are the mildest kind available. We have asked ReCAAP to confirm in writing that these are two different fifty-eights.