Makassar Strait
Back to baseline after a record low in April.
Normal +5% 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 | 54 | +2% |
| September 2026 | 54 | +3% |
| August 2026 | 52 | −2% |
| July 2026 | 51 | −4% |
| June 2026 | 58 | +10% |
| May 2026 | 47 | −11% |
The 18 months before that
| Month | Transits/day | vs baseline |
|---|---|---|
| April 2026 | 40 | −24% |
| March 2026 | 45 | −16% |
| February 2026 | 43 | −19% |
| January 2026 | 49 | −7% |
| December 2025 | 44 | −18% |
| November 2025 | 48 | −9% |
| October 2025 | 48 | −9% |
| September 2025 | 46 | −12% |
| August 2025 | 47 | −12% |
| July 2025 | 44 | −17% |
| June 2025 | 44 | −18% |
| May 2025 | 45 | −15% |
| April 2025 | 44 | −18% |
| March 2025 | 47 | −11% |
| February 2025 | 48 | −10% |
| January 2025 | 53 | −1% |
| December 2024 | 57 | +7% |
| November 2024 | 52 | −1% |
Record high 64.5/day (December 2023), record low 38.5/day (April 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.
A dip, and a recovery
Makassar runs between Borneo and Sulawesi. It set its record low in April 2026 at 40 transits a day, recovered sharply through May and June, and now sits level with its 2019–2023 baseline and up on last year.
The rebound was fast — the strongest two-month recovery in its record — and it has left the route back where it has spent most of the past seven years.
Volatility rather than trend
The largest single-month fall in the record is January 2022, from 54 a day to 43. This route moves around more than the other Indonesian passages and returns to the middle each time. Read one month in isolation and it can look like a disruption; read the series and it looks like weather.
That is a general caution about this board, and Makassar is the clearest example of it.
Its neighbours
Lombok and Sunda are the deeper alternatives through the archipelago; Ombai is the eastern one.