What is a shipping chokepoint?

A shipping chokepoint is a narrow stretch of water — a canal, strait, or channel — that nearly all ships travelling between two large regions must pass through. Examples: the Suez Canal links Asia to Europe, the Strait of Hormuz lets oil out of the Persian Gulf. Because there's no easy alternative route, any disruption at a chokepoint ripples through global trade within days.

Where does the data come from?

Live daily transit counts come from the IMF PortWatch project, which derives them from AIS (ship transponder) data. Historical baselines and disruption timelines are curated from IMF, UNCTAD, Suez Canal Authority, Panama Canal Authority, and Lloyd's List reporting.

Why do transits suddenly drop at a chokepoint?

Three common reasons: (1) physical disruption — a ship grounding like Ever Given (Suez, 2021) or a drought like Panama (2023-2024); (2) security events — attacks on shipping like the Houthi strikes in the Red Sea from late 2023; (3) geopolitics — closures, sanctions, or wartime restrictions. A drop of 20%+ vs baseline usually means one of these is happening.

≋≋≋──⚓──≋≋≋─────────────≋───────────≋≋≋──⚓──≋≋≋── STRAIT WATCH ////// GLOBAL SHIPPING CHOKEPOINT MONITOR ──────≋≋≋──⚓──────────────────≋≋≋──⚓──≋≋≋──────────

Strait Watch — Live Shipping Chokepoints

Daily transits at Suez · Panama · Hormuz · Malacca · Bab-el-Mandeb · Bosphorus · Dover · vs 12-month baseline · AIS-derived via IMF PortWatch · auto-refresh every 15 min

✓ ALL CHOKEPOINTS FLOWING

Loading live AIS transit data from IMF PortWatch…

Last data: —

IMF PortWatch ↗

A shipping chokepoint is a narrow stretch of water that almost every ship between two regions has to pass through. Seven of them carry the bulk of global seaborne trade. When transits at a chokepoint drop sharply — a grounding, a drought, an attack, a blockade — the rest of the world feels it within days: empty shelves, fuel spikes, container rates doubling. This dashboard shows how many ships are crossing each one today, vs the 12-month normal, plus a plain-English status and a 30-day trend. Click any chokepoint to expand.

// GLOBAL SNAPSHOT

Chokepoints Tracked

global maritime arteries

Transits Today

—

ships crossing all 7

Vs Baseline

—

deviation from 12-mo avg

Disruptions

—

chokepoints below normal

Global Trade

~80%

flows through these 7

Last Update

—

latest daily record · IMF PortWatch

// WORLD MAP · CLICK A MARKER

▸ Global Chokepoint Map click a marker or card to focus · dashed lines = major shipping routes

Flowing normally

Slightly off baseline

Significant drop / surge

Severe disruption

Live AIS-derived daily transit counts from IMF PortWatch (IMF × Oxford)

// CHOKEPOINT CARDS · TRANSITS VS BASELINE

// DETAIL VIEW

—

Loading…

Transits today

—

12-mo baseline

—

Deviation

—

Trade share

Length / width

—

Connects

—

▸ 30-day transit trendvs baseline

▸ Typical vessel mix% of annual transits

▸ Key facts

▸ Notable eventsrecent & historic

▸ Global disruption logmajor events that reshaped seaborne trade

// WHY SHIPPING CHOKEPOINTS MATTER

⚓ Suez Canal (Egypt)

193 km artificial sea-level canal linking the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Carries ~12% of global trade and ~30% of container traffic. A single grounding (Ever Given, March 2021) trapped $10B/day in cargo for 6 days.

🚢 Panama Canal (Panama)

82 km lock-based canal between the Atlantic and Pacific. Saves ships the 13,000 km trip around Cape Horn. Drought in 2023–24 forced the authority to cut daily transits by a third — an unprecedented climate chokepoint squeeze.

⚡ Strait of Hormuz (Iran / Oman)

Only sea route out of the Persian Gulf. ~20% of the world's oil — and an even larger share of LNG — passes through daily. Any military incident here is instantly a global oil-price event.

🌍 Strait of Malacca (Malaysia / Indonesia / Singapore)

1,000 km corridor between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The busiest strait in the world by tonnage — ~30% of global trade and ~80% of China's and Japan's oil imports.

💣 Bab-el-Mandeb (Yemen / Djibouti)

The southern gate to the Red Sea / Suez. Only 29 km wide. Houthi attacks from November 2023 cut transits by ~50% and pushed most container traffic around the Cape of Good Hope.

⚓ Bosphorus (Turkey)

31 km strait inside Istanbul connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Critical route for Russian & Ukrainian grain and Caspian oil. Tight, winding, and subject to Turkish convoy rules under the Montreux Convention.

🚢 Dover Strait (UK / France)

The world's busiest shipping lane by vessel count — 400+ transits per day between the North Sea and the English Channel. Tightly traffic-separated by the UK and French coastguards.

📈 Why watch all seven

Roughly 80% of global seaborne trade passes through at least one of these chokepoints. Watching all seven at once is the single best real-time indicator of whether the world's supply chain is under stress.

FAQ — Strait Watch

What exactly is a "transit"?

One transit = one vessel crossing the chokepoint once. A ship going north through Suez and then coming back south counts as two transits. Only commercial vessels broadcasting on AIS are counted — fishing boats, navy vessels, and dark-fleet tankers may be missed.

What is the "baseline" I'm comparing against?

The 12-month rolling average transit count for the same chokepoint — roughly what a normal day looks like. A reading 10% below baseline is noise. 25% below is worth watching. 40% below usually means a named disruption is in progress.

Why only 7 chokepoints?

These seven carry the overwhelming majority of seaborne trade. Others — the Danish Straits, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Kerch Strait, the Taiwan Strait — matter regionally, but the seven shown here are where global supply-chain shocks originate.

How current is the data?

Live transit counts come from the IMF PortWatch project, which updates daily based on AIS (Automatic Identification System) data from satellites. If the live feed is temporarily unavailable, the app falls back to the published 12-month baseline so the dashboard still loads meaningfully — a banner will tell you which mode you're seeing.

What should I actually do with this?

It's a macro-watching tool, not a trading signal. If you ship cargo, run a fleet, hedge freight rates, follow commodity markets, or just want an early read on whether "things are okay out there" — two red pills here often precede headlines by a few days.

Is my data private?

Yes. The dashboard runs entirely in your browser and only fetches public IMF PortWatch data. No accounts, no cookies from this tool, no tracking beyond standard Google Analytics pageviews.