ANALYSIS: Bab el-Mandeb traffic climbs back up to 29 ships, but a third still sails dark

Twenty-nine vessels Thursday, nineteen in, ten out

The number that opens this dossier

According to Reuters, 29 commodity vessels transited Bab el-Mandeb on Thursday, including 19 entries and 10 exits. That count covers a single day, in a strategic strait where traffic swings sharply from one day to the next according to the data gathered here for this full dossier. That number alone says nothing about a trend; it only takes on meaning once placed beside the month's other readings.

What the makeup of those 29 vessels reveals

Reuters specifies that Thursday's 29 commodity vessels included several tankers, among them two VLCCs, two Suezmax and six Aframax ships. These three tanker classes carry very different volumes: a VLCC can load several times the volume of an Aframax, meaning a simple vessel count doesn't automatically reflect a volume of crude or gas proportional to the number of units. A count that stops at the number of hulls tells only half of what actually moved through the strait that day. A ship count is never complete if you ignore what those ships actually carry.

The month's peak still stands at 46 ships, reached on July 14

A level not matched since

Still according to Reuters, carried by US News, Bab el-Mandeb's level has stayed below the month's peak, set at 46 vessels on July 14. Twenty-nine ships Thursday, compared with a peak of 46 two weeks earlier, does not tell the story of a full rebound — it tells the story of a partial recovery, still far from the mid-month summit.

Why this benchmark changes how the number reads

Without that July 14 reference point, 29 vessels could look like good news on its own. With it, the same figure becomes the measure of a gap that's still open: seventeen ships are still missing between the mid-month peak and Thursday's count, a gap neither Reuters nor US News explains in detail in the excerpts consulted here. Reporting the 29 without the 46 would have told a cleaner story, but a less honest one. An isolated number is worth nothing without knowing what it's actually being measured against.

Kpler had already logged 49 confirmed crossings on July 25, a higher total

A different source, a different day, a bigger total

Per Reuters, cited by Middle East Eye, Kpler reported that on July 25 activity at Bab al-Mandeb climbed to 49 confirmed crossings, including five sanctioned vessels, 11 ships part of the shadow fleet, and four dark transits. That total far exceeds Thursday's 29 ships, which illustrates just how sharply maritime traffic figures in this zone fluctuate from one week — or even one day — to the next.

What "shadow fleet" and "dark transits" actually mean

Eleven ships classified as "shadow fleet" and four in "dark transit" out of a total of 49 means that roughly a third of confirmed crossings that day escaped standard transparent identification. A shadow fleet generally refers to vessels that regularly change flag, insurer, or identifier to get around international sanctions, while a dark transit refers to a ship that deliberately cuts its location signal for part of the journey. More ships moving does not automatically mean more of that movement is visible to regulators. A traffic recovery does not automatically become a traffic under watch.

Twenty-five ships according to SANA, close to but not matching Reuters

A four-ship gap on the same day

According to SANA, which also cites Reuters, 25 vessels carrying commodities passed Bab al-Mandeb on Thursday, with 18 entries and seven exits. That total of 25 differs from the 29 Reuters put forward for the same Thursday, a four-ship gap neither source explicitly accounts for in the excerpts consulted.

Why a four-ship gap isn't trivial

A gap of four ships out of roughly thirty represents nearly a 14 percent difference between two counts of the same day. This piece does not rule on which of the two sources is more accurate: it names the discrepancy rather than arbitrarily picking a number. One possible explanation, unconfirmed by the sources, would involve different cutoff times for closing out a maritime "day," a detail neither Reuters nor SANA spells out in the material available. That two wires drawing on the same wire service still disagree on a headline number says something about how loosely defined a shipping "day" can be. Two agencies citing the same reference source can still land on two different totals.

The National reports a 56 percent drop the preceding Sunday

A day far weaker than the month's average

According to The National, only 15 commodity vessels transited Bab Al Mandeb on Sunday, a 56 percent drop from the 34 recorded on July 20. That figure of 15 ships, well below Thursday's 29 or the 49 confirmed by Kpler on July 25, illustrates just how volatile short-term traffic is in this zone, where a quiet day can follow a busy one with no visible gradual transition.

What this isolated drop does not let us conclude

A 56 percent drop over a single day does not prove a lasting collapse of traffic, any more than the 49 crossings on July 25 proved a full return to normal. Across four reference days gathered in this dossier — July 20 at 34 ships, July 25 at 49, a Sunday at 15, and a Thursday at either 29 or 25 depending on the source — no straight-line trend emerges. Anyone trying to plot these four points on a single rising or falling line would be forcing a shape onto data that doesn't hold one. The strait doesn't tell a linear story, it tells a string of contrasting days.

A Houthi-Saudi embargo cited as a factor in that Sunday drop

What The National links to the 56 percent decline

The National frames this 56 percent drop in the context of a "Houthis' Saudi embargo," without the excerpts consulted here detailing its exact scope or expected duration. This security factor, distinct from the broader tensions discussed elsewhere in this dossier, suggests several separate dynamics are acting on Bab el-Mandeb traffic at once.

Why this factor deserves naming without over-reading it

None of the sources gathered here precisely quantifies this embargo's share of the observed decline, relative to other possible causes such as weather, maritime insurance, or individual shipowner decisions. A partial embargo can deter some captains without stopping others, depending on their cargo, flag, or contractual relationship with insurers carrying a higher risk tolerance. The temptation to hang an entire drop on a single named cause is real, and this piece resists it. Naming a documented cause doesn't excuse admitting what it fails to explain on its own.

The Strait of Hormuz tells a parallel story, not an identical one

Twelve ships Wednesday, up over two days

According to Reuters, 12 commodity ships transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, with six entering and six exiting, and the number rose compared with the two preceding days. That figure of twelve is markedly lower than the 29 or 49 ships recorded at Bab el-Mandeb over the same period, underscoring that the two straits, often mentioned together in regional coverage, live through distinct traffic dynamics.

Why conflating the two straits would be a mistake

Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz share neither the same risk geography nor the same traffic figures, even though they often appear in the same dispatches devoted to regional maritime security. Bab el-Mandeb links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, off Yemen, while the Strait of Hormuz separates the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea, between Iran and the Arabian peninsula. The armed actors, documented threats, and traffic figures differ significantly, even when both straits are covered in the same regional roundup. Lumping them into one regional narrative flattens differences that matter to any shipowner actually plotting a route. Two straits under tension don't automatically tell the same story.

A Qatari tanker crosses Hormuz for the first time in three weeks

A symbol more than a volume

According to Reuters, an LNG tanker controlled by QatarEnergy, the Al Areesh, left the Strait of Hormuz overnight, the first vessel of its kind recorded by maritime tracking data to exit the strait since July 11. That fact, precise and dated, contrasts with Bab el-Mandeb's daily fluctuations: it's an isolated, identifiable event, not a mere aggregate number. Qatar ranks among the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, and every day this class of tanker is absent from this route represents an entire cargo delayed to customers, often bound by fixed-date delivery contracts.

What a single ship can and cannot signal

An LNG tanker crossing the strait again after three weeks' absence is a strong signal for gas companies, but a signal is not a statistic: it says nothing about the behavior of the dozens of other vessels still avoiding the zone. Gas buyers watching this route will need more than a single crossing before adjusting their own shipping assumptions. A return can announce a trend without yet constituting one.

Kpler warns that some ships are sailing with transponders off

The methodological limit every source shares

Kpler notes that some vessels may sail with their transponders switched off, which limits the full cross-checking of the counts presented in this dossier. This methodological caveat isn't specific to one source: it potentially touches the counts from Reuters, SANA, The National, and Middle East Eye, all ultimately dependent on transponder-based tracking data.

Why this limit must stay visible when reading the numbers

A total of 29, 25, or 49 ships is never an absolute exhaustive count: it's a count of what tracking systems were able to observe. Automatic identification systems used by Kpler and news agencies depend on a signal each ship transmits voluntarily; a captain who decides to cut that signal, for commercial reasons or to dodge sanctions, removes their ship from every official count without actually leaving the strait. The gap between what's tracked and what's actually moving is structural, not a temporary glitch someone will soon fix. What Kpler can't see doesn't stop existing because of that.

The UN calls for Red Sea de-escalation as early as July

An institutional framework that predates the traffic figures

According to UN News, the head of the UN called for de-escalation in the Red Sea in late July, in a context where seafarers remained stranded pending resolution of the regional crisis. This institutional framework, distinct from the commercial data supplied by Kpler and Reuters, places traffic figures within a broader human-security concern, beyond mere logistics.

What this UN framework adds to reading the numbers

The stranded seafarers mentioned by the UN are a reminder that a shipping-traffic figure has a human side: every ship that neither enters nor exits corresponds to a crew whose situation also remains suspended. A seafarer stuck for weeks aboard a ship waiting for clearance to cross a strait appears in none of the Kpler or Reuters tables cited above, even though their situation depends directly on the same logistical blockages. That dashboard measures cargo movement; it was never built to measure the people stuck aboard it. A logistics dashboard sometimes hides real people waiting, motionless, somewhere at sea.

The gradual return RFI has documented since December 2025

A French-language source that dates the start of the recovery

According to RFI, as early as December 2025, a tentative return of shipping companies was already taking shape in the Bab el-Mandeb strait, off Yemen. This first-hand French-language source situates the movement observed in July 2026 within a longer trajectory, begun several months earlier, rather than as a phenomenon sudden and specific to the summer of 2026.

What that earlier start changes about reading July's numbers

If the return began back in December, July's 29 or 49 ships don't mark a spectacular rebound, but the continuation of a trend already documented eight months earlier. RFI described, in late 2025, shipping companies still hesitant to reroute through the strait, often preferring the longer route around Africa despite its added time and fuel cost. That this movement continues seven months later, with peaks near 50 ships, suggests gradually rebuilt confidence rather than an abrupt reversal. A long, gradual recovery reads very differently than a sudden one-off surge would.

Five sanctioned ships and a third opaque traffic, a share that raises questions

What the July 25 makeup reveals about the nature of this traffic

Recall that among the 49 confirmed crossings on July 25, Kpler counted five sanctioned vessels alongside ships classified as "shadow fleet" or in undeclared transit. A significant share of the traffic recorded at Bab el-Mandeb that day thus escaped fully transparent identification, which distinguishes a rise in volume from a rise in legitimate, traceable trade.

Why this detail tempers any optimistic reading of the recovery

A rebound in ship numbers doesn't automatically mean a rebound in normally legal and insured commerce. Counting ships is not the same as counting ships that are actually in compliance.

No shared measurement hour allows a perfect cross-check

What the sources fail to harmonize

The sources gathered here do not allow us to isolate a single shared measurement hour for Bab el-Mandeb, and several articles blend Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz within the same regional tracking, which complicates a line-by-line comparison across the different counts cited in this dossier.

Why this absence of a shared standard must be named

Nine sources were gathered here, and none shares exactly the same hourly counting method. Some dispatches appear to close their reference day at midnight UTC, others at an unspecified local hour, and none of the sources consulted here explicitly details its own time-zone convention. Adding up numbers that were never measured the same way only manufactures a false sense of precision.

What this dossier can state, and what it refuses to settle

A real recovery, but a partial and fragile one

This dossier can state that traffic at Bab el-Mandeb ranged, between July 20 and July 31, from 15 to 49 ships depending on the day and the source, with no count matching the peak of 46 ships on July 14 reported by Reuters and US News. That wide range, rather than a single smoothed-out figure, faithfully reflects what the nine sources gathered here actually allow us to establish, over an eleven-day window running from July 20 through July 31, 2026 inclusive.

What this piece refuses to add to the facts

This piece does not predict whether Bab el-Mandeb will return to its pre-crisis traffic level, for lack of sufficient data on that earlier period in the sources consulted. Nor does it claim to precisely quantify the shadow fleet's share of the observed recovery, or establish a direct causal link between the UN's call for de-escalation and the traffic figures observed since. A documented partial recovery is worth more than an assumed total one.

Conclusion: the strait catches its breath, without the crisis letting go

Twenty-nine ships Thursday, fifteen the preceding Sunday, forty-nine on July 25: these numbers do not draw a straight line toward normalcy, they draw a strait that remains unsettled. The month's peak, 46 ships on July 14, has not been matched in the most recent days documented here, and the presence of sanctioned or undeclared-transit vessels reminds us that a portion of this traffic remains, by nature, difficult to fully verify.

What this dossier ultimately holds onto is the coexistence of two truths that don't cancel each other out. On one side, a documented return traced by RFI as far back as December 2025 and confirmed by occasional peaks near 50 ships. On the other, traffic that remains under security strain, caught between the embargo cited by The National, the dark transponders flagged by Kpler, and the UN's call for de-escalation. For a shipowner who must decide, this very week, whether to route cargo through Bab el-Mandeb or around Africa instead, none of these nine counts taken alone is enough to settle the question: it's their sum, with its gaps and acknowledged limits, that forms the only information actually available to assess the real risk of the passage. A strait filling back up is not yet a strait that has stopped being frightening.

Sources

Primary sources

UN News (French) — Red Sea: UN chief calls for de-escalation

UN News — Stranded seafarers remain trapped as Hormuz shipping stalls

Secondary sources

Reuters — Bab el-Mandeb sees 25 commodity vessels transit, Hormuz traffic stays thin

US News — Bab El-Mandeb Shipping Rises Amid Hopes of Resolution in US-Iran War

Middle East Eye — Kpler: Only six vessels cross Hormuz as traffic remains mixed

SANA — 25 vessels transit Bab al-Mandeb as shipping through Hormuz remains subdued

The National — Bab Al Mandeb ship traffic slumps 56% since Houthis' Saudi embargo

Reuters — QatarEnergy-controlled LNG tanker exits Hormuz, first in nearly three weeks

RFI — En mer Rouge, le retour timide des compagnies maritimes dans le détroit de Bab el-Mandeb