Tsugaru Strait
A record low in January, well above baseline by February.
Above normal +16% 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 | 52 | +13% |
| September 2026 | 54 | +16% |
| August 2026 | 54 | +17% |
| July 2026 | 53 | +14% |
| June 2026 | 54 | +17% |
| May 2026 | 48 | +5% |
The 18 months before that
| Month | Transits/day | vs baseline |
|---|---|---|
| April 2026 | 49 | +6% |
| March 2026 | 49 | +7% |
| February 2026 | 47 | +1% |
| January 2026 | 35 | −25% |
| December 2025 | 36 | −21% |
| November 2025 | 39 | −16% |
| October 2025 | 44 | −5% |
| September 2025 | 52 | +11% |
| August 2025 | 52 | +13% |
| July 2025 | 55 | +19% |
| June 2025 | 52 | +12% |
| May 2025 | 49 | +5% |
| April 2025 | 46 | −1% |
| March 2025 | 43 | −6% |
| February 2025 | 42 | −10% |
| January 2025 | 38 | −17% |
| December 2024 | 40 | −13% |
| November 2024 | 40 | −14% |
Record high 57.3/day (September 2024), record low 32.1/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.
One month, a third higher
The Tsugaru Strait separates Honshu from Hokkaido and is one of the routes connecting the Sea of Japan to the Pacific. It set its record low in January 2026 at 35 transits a day, then jumped to 47 in February and has held above its baseline every month since.
Turning from a record low to above-normal inside a single month is rare here. Most routes that move that fast are moving down.
Recent, not long-standing
Against 2019–2023 and against last year the route reads about the same — up roughly a seventh on both. As at Luzon Strait, that agreement is the signature of a change that happened recently rather than one the route has carried for years.
A small route by count
Tsugaru carries a fraction of what Korea Strait does. The percentages here are sound — it is comfortably above the threshold where a count becomes too small to express as a percentage — but a swing of five vessels a day moves this line considerably more than it would move a higher-volume route.