Maritime corpus

Chokepoints and waterways

Track current disruption scores, status, AIS congestion, and update times for the 13 maritime chokepoints in the World Monitor public status snapshot.

Which maritime chokepoints are most disrupted?

The published Sep 28, 2026, 4:54 AM UTC snapshot gives the highest disruption score to Kerch Strait and Strait of Hormuz, each at 70/100. The table covers all 13 tracked waterways and shows each source timestamp. A higher score means more current pressure, but the badge is a risk signal and does not declare unrestricted passage or operational closure.

How does World Monitor score chokepoint status?

World Monitor scores each waterway 0-100 from a baseline geopolitical threat weight, active NGA navigational warnings, AIS congestion severity, and a transit anomaly bonus when PortWatch daily transits drop sharply under high-threat conditions. AIS event counts, relay transit counts, and PortWatch week-over-week movement are published as context rather than score inputs. Each source controls only its own values, so unavailable evidence is withheld rather than published as a measured zero or a calm reading — in this snapshot all 13 waterways publish an AIS congestion reading. The methodology documents the inputs and score bands.

Why do some chokepoint pages show fewer metrics than others?

A metric appears only when the source behind it reported for that snapshot. Navigational warnings, AIS disruptions and AIS congestion each depend on their own feed. The daily transit count and PortWatch week-over-week movement each depend on their own source availability, so either can appear without the other. Unavailable values can appear as an em dash or be hidden, depending on the metric, so a sparse page means missing evidence, not a calm waterway. Published revisions to these rules are in the corrections log.

How much oil moves through each waterway

Disruption scores describe current pressure, not importance. The committed 2023 EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints series gives a volume baseline for 7 of the 13 tracked waterways, which is what separates a high score on a marginal strait from a high score on a corridor that moves a fifth of seaborne oil. Where our name and the EIA row differ, both are shown — the Dover Strait page draws on the EIA Danish Straits row.

Baseline source: U.S. EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints (2023). The remaining 6 tracked waterways have no row in that series; their pages say so rather than estimating one.

Why each waterway is tracked

Bab el-Mandeb

Bab el-Mandeb is the strait between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

Bosporus Strait

The Bosporus Strait runs through Istanbul to connect the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and, via the Dardanelles, the Mediterranean.

Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is the deep-water route around the southern tip of Africa.

Dover Strait

The Strait of Dover is the narrowest point of the English Channel, connecting it to the North Sea.

Kerch Strait

The Kerch Strait connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov and is the only sea route to the Azov ports of Ukraine and Russia.

Korea Strait

The Korea Strait lies between the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese islands, linking the East China Sea to the Sea of Japan.

Lombok Strait

The Lombok Strait, between Bali and Lombok, is a deep-water alternative to the Malacca–Singapore route.

Panama Canal

The Panama Canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, saving vessels the long voyage around South America.

Strait of Gibraltar

The Strait of Gibraltar is the roughly 14-km-wide gateway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the open ocean.

Strait of Malacca

The Strait of Malacca runs between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, linking the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and the Pacific.

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal is the artificial waterway linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, giving shipping the shortest route between Europe and Asia without rounding Africa.

Taiwan Strait

The Taiwan Strait separates Taiwan from mainland China and carries a large share of the container traffic moving between North Asia and the rest of the world.

How this list is scoped

The 13 waterways come from a committed registry, not from whatever is in the news. Each has a detail page carrying the same four-source status block, the modelled corridors that route through it, and its alternatives when it is unavailable. A waterway enters the registry because traffic there has no cheap substitute — the test is substitutability, not incident count — so the list changes rarely and changes are recorded in the corrections log.

What these pages are not

They are not a navigation product and not an open/closed declaration. A score is a triage signal built from the sources named above; it does not authorise or discourage a transit, and it carries no view on the legality or safety of any particular voyage. Transit counts are a relay observation of vessels seen, not a port authority figure, and the oil volumes above are a 2023 annual-average baseline rather than current throughput.

Sources: World Monitor weekly pulse snapshot and World Monitor chokepoint registry. Published September 28, 2026. Methodology: chokepoint disruption scoring. Published revisions: corrections log.