I was just playing the pirate island from the bookhunter quest and want to give a little feedback on this, as it happened on my installation (I am using v 1.09).
1) None of the pirate zombies did move up or fought back during the fights, they just stood on their spawn positions and let themselves be slaughtered.
2) IMO their loot is too high (speaking in terms of monetary reward, when selling it later on), they dropped Studded Leather Armor +2, Bastard Sword +2 and Scimitar +2 Rashid's Talon, the commanders dropped a Scimitar +3 Water's Edge instead of a Scimitar +2 and an additional Helmet of Defense (which was, due to the description, improved by Taerom Fuiruim, what I had done before with one helm I had found). I'm not sure, whether this loot does belong to the Sandrah mod or is due to some interference with the combination of mods I happen to have installed.
3) Apart from the regular way to leave the island with the ship and wrecking on the coast, I found another way, with an unmarked (with respect to CTRL+4) transition zone on the island map (the one which looks like the second Cloakwood zone), which lets me transfer like a regular map transition, by opening the world map and letting me choose my destination map. Not sure, whether this is intended or not, or if it will have any consequences on the story or the quest if I leave using that way.