In 1999, while stationed at Keesler AFB for technical training, a friend of mine, Airman Eberhart, randomly mentioned to me in line for chow one day that 16 people had been killed by pirates the year before. I remember my reaction as being, first, “Pirates!?” and, second, “Where did you find that out?”

Sure enough, it was true. Since that time, I’ve also randomly mentioned to people the fact that “___ people were killed by pirates last year.”* I get the same dumbfounded look, the same disbelief and the same question that I first asked Eberhart. No one seems to believe pirates still exist.

But they certainly do, as William Langewiesche made clear in an article in Atlantic Monthly and a book.

In fact:

Global shipping officials warned Wednesday that pirate attacks off Somalia’s coast have spiraled to terrifying levels, with U.S. and international navies failing to protect seafarers from being kidnapped.

Somali pirates have abducted more than 100 crew members of various nationalities, often seizing them in international waters and spiriting them away to Somalian territory, said Capt. Pottengal Mukundan, director of the British-based International Maritime Bureau, a shipping security watchdog.

The attacks have increased despite the permanent presence of an international task force in the northern Indian Ocean that patrols the Somali coast in hopes of intercepting terrorists. U.S. destroyers are normally assigned to the task force and patrol in pairs.

It’s also not a good idea to get too close to the Somali coast.

*I usually just make up the number — or repeat the one Eberhart gave me. How many people will actually go home and check anyway? The whole point is to inform them that pirates do still roam the high seas — and not just in fairy tales.