News from the high seas: Pirate attacks are up 75% in the last several years. According to a RAND study, "there's now at least an attempt at a pirate attack nearly every day." This is half-hilarious, half-worrisome. Far from the lovably mercenary Jack Sparrow paradigm, these pirates proliferate small arms, strong-arm weak Indian Ocean governments, pushing past lax coastal security (even post-9/11) to pinch valuable goods, from guns to oil to sailors themselves.
And now, environmentalists! In late May a Greenpeace vessel was surrounded and attacked by Turkish fishing boats irked at the group's meddling in their seas. Greenpeace had been advocating more environmentally sound fishing methods and trying to create a marine reserve in the prized tuna fishing waters. The purse seine (bonus vocab from my conservation biology class in college), used by the trawlers, is among the more unsustainable methods of fishing that exist. The seine scoops up fish, but can also snare turtles, smaller sharks and everything else, including treasure chests, I suppose.
Watch the swirling Mediterranean drama yourself:
--Dayo Olopade