Bohai Strait
Below baseline, and below last year, without a turning point.
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 | 158 | −12% |
| September 2026 | 155 | −14% |
| August 2026 | 155 | −14% |
| July 2026 | 155 | −14% |
| June 2026 | 167 | −7% |
| May 2026 | 163 | −9% |
The 18 months before that
| Month | Transits/day | vs baseline |
|---|---|---|
| April 2026 | 170 | −5% |
| March 2026 | 170 | −5% |
| February 2026 | 161 | −10% |
| January 2026 | 171 | −5% |
| December 2025 | 165 | −8% |
| November 2025 | 180 | +1% |
| October 2025 | 166 | −8% |
| September 2025 | 174 | −3% |
| August 2025 | 171 | −5% |
| July 2025 | 172 | −4% |
| June 2025 | 175 | −2% |
| May 2025 | 177 | −2% |
| April 2025 | 174 | −3% |
| March 2025 | 170 | −6% |
| February 2025 | 156 | −13% |
| January 2025 | 163 | −9% |
| December 2024 | 180 | +0% |
| November 2024 | 173 | −4% |
Record high 214.2/day (December 2020), record low 100.1/day (February 2019), 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.
A high-volume route drifting down
The Bohai Strait is the entrance to the Bohai Sea on China’s northern coast, and it carries more daily transits than most routes in this set. It peaked in December 2020 and has run below its 2019–2023 baseline for some time — currently by about a seventh, and it is down against last year as well.
Both baselines pointing the same way is the pattern that suggests a trend rather than a fluctuation. Where a route is down on one and flat on the other, as at Bab el-Mandeb, the fall has already happened. Here it has not obviously stopped.
The record contains one sharp climb
December 2019 is the largest single-month move: 136 a day to 203. The record low came ten months earlier, in February 2019. That volatility in the early part of the series is worth knowing when reading the current decline, which is gradual by comparison.
What this is not
This route is largely domestic coastal traffic rather than an international transit corridor, so its count answers a different question from Suez or Malacca. It measures activity, not passage between regions.