They don't have any data for the east coast of Africa because there probably aren't any receivers setup to receive AIS signals in that area.

Yeah after reading the FAQ I came to the same conclusion. But also realized that pirates wouldn't actually need this site and could just get their own AIS receiver's

I just checked on the Bloomberg, and we have data for ships off of Somalia.. so it definitely exists:

http://imgur.com/fZslp

Maybe everyone's too scared to take a boat of the coast of Somalia?

Also notice the ridiculous amount of ships of of Iran's coast!

Those are mostly oil tankers. Since 20% of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz [1], the Iranians threat of closing that passage has petroleum prices recently. More analysis at The Oil Drum [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Hormuz

[2] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8956

I see business opportunities for marinetraffic.com to offer higher resolution/precision maps to paying customer. ;)

Was just thinking this, the new tool for pirates has got to be a laptop with this site open.