Balabac Strait
Up a quarter on last year, from a record low in January.
Below normal −12% against its 2019–2023 baseline
Reading for — 6 days ago. Figures are a 30-day mean, so one quiet day does not move them.
Two years of daily transits
Month by month
| Month | Transits/day | vs baseline |
|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | 10 | −9% |
| September 2026 | 10 | −13% |
| August 2026 | 12 | +5% |
| July 2026 | 12 | +12% |
| June 2026 | 12 | +7% |
| May 2026 | 11 | −2% |
The 18 months before that
| Month | Transits/day | vs baseline |
|---|---|---|
| April 2026 | 10 | −14% |
| March 2026 | 9 | −15% |
| February 2026 | 10 | −11% |
| January 2026 | 9 | −16% |
| December 2025 | 8 | −31% |
| November 2025 | 10 | −14% |
| October 2025 | 9 | −18% |
| September 2025 | 9 | −20% |
| August 2025 | 8 | −30% |
| July 2025 | 10 | −5% |
| June 2025 | 9 | −16% |
| May 2025 | 9 | −19% |
| April 2025 | 9 | −21% |
| March 2025 | 10 | −6% |
| February 2025 | 10 | −5% |
| January 2025 | 11 | −2% |
| December 2024 | 11 | −1% |
| November 2024 | 12 | +8% |
Record high 15.1/day (December 2019), record low 7.3/day (January 2026), on the 30-day mean since January 2019.
Source
Daily transit counts derived from satellite AIS positions by IMF PortWatch, covering 2841 days from 1 January 2019.
Source: IMF PortWatch, https://portwatch.imf.org. PortWatch is published under IMF terms rather than CC BY 4.0, unlike the rest of the data on this site: the figures here are derived and transformed, and the underlying series is not republished.
Recovered, and then some
Balabac lies between Palawan and Borneo, at the southern end of the Philippine archipelago. It set its record low in January 2026 and has risen in most months since, now sitting above its 2019–2023 baseline and up about a quarter on last year.
The Philippine routes are moving together
Luzon and Mindoro both stepped up sharply in May 2026 and have held the higher level. Balabac’s rise is gentler and started earlier, but it points the same way.
Three neighbouring routes up at once is the observation. Whether they share a cause is not something a vessel count can establish, and this page does not speculate about it.
Scale
Balabac carries around twelve transits a day and its whole record spans about seven to fifteen. The percentages on this page are arithmetically correct and describe a change of a few ships; the count in the table is the plainer figure.