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Maritime shipping

Bab el-Mandeb Strait — Daily Cargo in Transit (Estimated)

An estimate of the cargo carried through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait each day, in metric tons, from IMF PortWatch. The strait joins the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, on the sea route to and from the Suez Canal.

Data status: Current
Official statisticSource figures as of October 16, 2026Sources & methods
Sources
IMF PortWatch (International Monetary Fund and University of Oxford)
Period covered
Jan 1, 2019 – Oct 11, 2026
Source figures as of
October 16, 2026
Geography
Bab el-Mandeb Strait, between Yemen and Djibouti and Eritrea
Sector
Transportation, Maritime Trade & Logistics · Maritime shipping
Seasonal adjustment
Not seasonally adjusted
Transformations
Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures
Revisions
Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
Data status
Current
Limitations
Seasonal swings are left in: compare a period with the same period a year earlier.

Full method · Research standards

Key figures

CK estimateMetric tons · calculated by CK Economics from International Monetary Fund data

Latest · Oct 11, 2026
1,140,000
28-day average −25.0% vs a year earlier1
5-year change
−64.6%
28-day average, against the 28 days to Oct 11, 20212
Record high
5,270,000
Jun 4, 20233
Record low
203,000
Jan 3, 20253
Where the latest ranks
16th pct.
Higher than 16% of the other 2,840 observations since Jan 1, 20194
  1. 1Average of the latest 28 days against the average of the same 28 days a year earlier; a single day swings too much to compare.
  2. 2Average of the latest 28 days against the same 28 days five and ten years earlier. No yearly growth rate is given for daily series.
  3. 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
  4. 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.

Methodology

PortWatch's estimate of the cargo carried by the ships that transit the Bab el-Mandeb Strait each day (container ships, dry bulk carriers, general cargo ships, roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) ships and tankers). For each ship it estimates how full the ship is from its draft and dimensions, and multiplies that share by the ship's deadweight tonnage (the most it can carry). The day's value is the sum over every transiting ship, in metric tons. A transit is counted when a ship passes through the chokepoint's boundary. A passage that spans several days is counted once, and the same ship is not counted again within 48 hours. IMF PortWatch builds it from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) position signals that ships broadcast, as collected by the UN Global Platform, following Arslanalp, Koepke and Verschuur, "Tracking Trade from Space" (IMF Working Paper 2021/225). The series runs daily from 1 January 2019, with days in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). PortWatch adds new days about once a week, a few days behind, and may revise recent days as late signals arrive. Single days swing with ship arrivals, so totals over a week or a month show the trend more clearly. These are estimates modelled from ship movements, not customs or canal records, and can differ from official tonnage statistics. Values are as published (the capacity field).

How we collect, check and project every dataset →

Source

International Monetary Fund, PortWatch, Daily Chokepoints Data (Bab el-Mandeb Strait, chokepoint4), with the University of Oxford; AIS data from the UN Global Platform: https://portwatch.imf.org/datasets/3da2b9ca97684916b75c4013f95d18ab_0/about — figures as published on 16 October 2026.

All data

2,841 observations, newest first · Metric tons

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PeriodValueChange y/y
Oct 11, 20261,136,777−5.8%
Oct 10, 2026573,864−47.5%
Oct 9, 2026673,505−63.9%
Oct 8, 2026788,622−20.5%
Oct 7, 20261,473,591+8.6%
Oct 6, 2026903,855−36.5%
Oct 5, 20261,301,061−0.6%
Oct 4, 20261,133,173−26.9%
Oct 3, 20261,149,125−9.3%
Oct 2, 2026823,908−60.8%
Oct 1, 2026888,347+74.1%
Sep 30, 2026738,133−21.7%
Sep 29, 2026980,632−25.6%
Sep 28, 2026943,325−55.0%
Sep 27, 20261,321,601+16.5%
Sep 26, 20261,136,344+1.8%
Sep 25, 20261,359,322−11.9%
Sep 24, 20261,175,553+81.5%
Sep 23, 2026847,745−12.8%
Sep 22, 20261,101,879−2.5%
Sep 21, 2026782,264−26.7%
Sep 20, 2026715,953−13.5%
Sep 19, 2026813,758−37.9%
Sep 18, 2026932,286−42.4%

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