Bab el-Mandeb Strait Live Tracker:
Ship Traffic and Risk Data

How to read the Bab el-Mandeb monitor

This monitor tracks two things for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait: how many vessels are moving through it and how much risk the route currently carries. Read them together to see whether ships are still using the strait or diverting around Africa.

• Risk index (0 to 100): A higher score means higher disruption risk from missile and drone attacks, vessel strikes, or threats in the southern Red Sea. A rising score is an early signal to review Red Sea routing.
• Daily transits: The number of vessels passing through Bab el-Mandeb per day. A sharp, sustained drop means fleets are avoiding the strait and rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope.
• Change vs normal: How current traffic compares to the strait's pre-disruption baseline. A large negative number confirms the route is still being avoided rather than recovering.
• Situation summary: A daily briefing on the attacks, diplomacy, and security activity driving the strait's status, so you get the "why" behind the numbers.

Unlike Hormuz, traffic here does not disappear when the strait is disrupted, it diverts around Africa. So watch the transit count against baseline: a sustained drop means the Cape detour is still adding cost and delay, not that oil has vanished.

How is the Bab el-Mandeb risk index calculated?

The risk index is a single 0 to 100 score built from four independent factors. Each factor is scored on its own scale and then added together, so the number is transparent and traceable rather than a black box. Two factors are specific to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Two are global market signals shared across every chokepoint.

Because vessel traffic and geopolitics are scored specifically for Bab el-Mandeb, the strait can share the same oil-price and financial-stress inputs as other routes yet still carry a very different total score. Here is how each factor works.

Vessel traffic (up to 40 points)

This factor measures how much Bab el-Mandeb traffic has contracted versus normal. We take the median of the last seven completed days of transits and divide it by the strait's normal baseline of 30 vessels per day to get a transit rate, then map that rate to a score. Traffic at or above normal scores 0. A complete halt scores the full 40.

Rates between these points are interpolated. If Bab el-Mandeb were running at 65% of normal (about 20 vessels a day), the factor would score about 8. Traffic comes from SeaVantage vessel-tracking data, using outbound transits over the last seven completed days. If fewer than three of those days have valid data, this factor returns no score rather than a guess.

Geopolitical risk (up to 30 points)

This factor captures missile and drone attacks, vessel strikes, blockade threats, and political tension specific to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the southern Red Sea. It is produced daily as a 0 to 30 score alongside the situation summary you see for the strait, so the number and the written briefing come from the same assessment. If an assessment cannot be produced, the factor returns no score rather than a neutral placeholder.

Brent crude price (up to 20 points)

This factor reads the oil market two ways and takes the higher of the two, so it catches both a sustained high price and a sudden weekly spike without double counting the same move.

• Price level: Brent at or below \$80 scores 0. The score rises with price to a full 20 at \$120 or above (for example, \$90 = 5, \$100 = 10, \$110 = 15).
• Weekly move: A week-over-week rise of 1% or more scores the size of that percentage move, capped at 20. Price declines and rises under 1% score 0.

The final Brent score is the larger of those two. It uses the U.S. EIA Brent crude spot price only. If the latest EIA price is more than 10 days old, this factor returns no score.

Financial stress (up to 10 points)

This factor uses the OFR Financial Stress Index from the U.S. Office of Financial Research, a daily measure of stress across global markets that serves as a broad, VIX-style read on financial conditions. The index value is capped into a 0 to 10 score. If no recent value is available, the factor returns no score.

We never pad the number. If any factor's data is missing or stale, that factor is left out rather than filled with a neutral value, so the Bab el-Mandeb score you see always reflects real, current inputs.

Where the Bab el-Mandeb data comes from

Every number on the monitor traces back to a named source. The Transit Trend chart, for example, plots SeaVantage vessel counts for Bab el-Mandeb against EIA oil prices so you can see traffic and price move together.

Ship positions on the map update in real time, every 15 minutes. The risk index and its daily inputs refresh once per day at around 00:00 UTC.

What is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait?

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Arabic for "Gate of Grief," is a narrow passage at the southern end of the Red Sea. It sits between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula to the east and Djibouti and Eritrea on the Horn of Africa to the west, and it connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean beyond.

Bab el-Mandeb is the southern gateway to the Suez Canal. Every tanker and container ship moving between the Gulf or Asia and Europe via Suez must pass through it first. The Yemeni island of Perim splits the strait into two channels: a wider western channel used by large international vessels and a shallow eastern channel that supertankers cannot use, which squeezes most traffic into a single usable lane.

Why the Bab el-Mandeb Strait matters for global trade

Bab el-Mandeb is one of the world's busiest oil and cargo chokepoints. Before the recent disruption, it carried roughly 12% of global seaborne oil trade and served as the southern gate for the Suez Canal route, which handles around 12% to 15% of world trade. Qatari LNG bound for Europe and a large share of Asia-Europe container traffic all pass through this single strait.

What makes Bab el-Mandeb different from Hormuz is the detour. When the strait becomes dangerous, ships can still reach their destination by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, but that reroute adds roughly 10 to 14 days and thousands of extra miles per voyage. The cargo is not lost, it just arrives later and costs far more:

• Asia-Europe voyages lengthen by about two weeks when ships divert around Africa
• Freight rates and war-risk insurance premiums reprice within days of each attack
• Suez Canal transits and revenue fall sharply as traffic avoids the Red Sea
• Extra time at sea removes vessel capacity from circulation, tightening global schedules

What happens when Bab el-Mandeb is disrupted?

Since late 2023, missile and drone attacks on commercial shipping in the southern Red Sea have pushed much of the traffic off this route. The effects ripple outward in three directions.

The tandem chokepoint: Bab el-Mandeb and the Suez route

Bab el-Mandeb and the Suez Canal work as a pair. Oil and cargo heading from the Gulf or Asia to Europe must clear Bab el-Mandeb before reaching Suez, so a threat at the strait effectively closes the entire Red Sea shortcut. That is why disruption here shows up almost immediately in Suez Canal transit counts and in Cape of Good Hope traffic, which surges as the diversion route absorbs the redirected ships. Watching Bab el-Mandeb gives you an early read on pressure across the whole Asia-Europe corridor.

Bab el-Mandeb Strait: frequently asked questions