HOUSTON—The next time you take the ferry across the Houston Ship Channel, take a second to thank the armed Coast Guard boats that patrol those waters.

Because the crew members aboard all of those big oil tankers you see have to venture into seas that aren’t nearly as safe.

Why?  Pirates.  Real, live, modern-day pirates.

So far this year, heavily-armed pirates have hijacked some 90 ships and are still holding a dozen of them.

Earlier this month, pirates off the coast of Somalia seized a Saudi tanker with $100 million worth of oil onboard.

The pirates have become such a problem that they’re forcing changes in how and where the big ships sail.

So how can a ship defend itself in the event of an attack?

“The best defense was not to let anyone get onboard the ship,” Reginald McKamie, who has ventured into the dangerous waters, said.

Now a lawyer, McKamie was a captain of oil tankers up until the 1990s.

“They would come out from Yemen or Somalia,” he said of the pirates.

McKamie’s ships, like many others, only had fire hoses to use against the sea-faring outlaws.

“On merchant ships, you don’t have any guns, any weapons,” McKamie said.

Why?

“Well, especially on tankers, it’s a danger,” McKamie said.

Weapons on an oil tanker could cause a serious explosion, so those ships remain unarmed – a fact the pirates are well aware of.

“The bad guys know everything about your ship,” McKamie said.

Father Sinclair Oubre said it’s a problem that everyone should care about.

“If somebody was hijacking an airplane a week, we’d be going ballistic,” Oubre said.

Father Oubre sometimes sails with Merchant Marines and is part of a worldwide network that assists mariners who’ve been robbed or kidnapped at sea.

He said the issue isn’t just about the welfare of the sailors – it also affects our pocketbooks.

“It has an impact on our pocket, though it seems to be so far away,” Oubre said.

The financial effects can be seen on Web sites of European shipping companies that do business in the Port of Houston.

They said they’re now avoiding the pirate hot spots, instead sailing thousands of miles out of the way. 

That’s adding extra cost that could affect everything we pay for, from gasoline to Christmas gifts.

The one place McKamie believes you are probably safe is on a cruise ship.

“It’s very difficult to scale a very large passenger ship,” he said.

Not that the pirates haven’t tried. In 2005, Somali pirates attacked a cruise ship with rocket-propelled grenades.

The ship’s security guards stopped them, and no passengers were hurt.

According to shipping companies, the only solution to the pirate problem is to send more armed naval patrols to combat outlaws on the high seas, much like the patrols that keep you safe in the Port of Houston.