Kpler counted 30 Bab el-Mandeb crossings on Sunday, August 2 — 20 exiting the Red Sea, 10 entering — down from 41 two days earlier. [1] Only one vessel made a dark transit. Monday desks circulating that weekend tape as a rebound toward the high 20s are reading a bounce, not a corridor.

The paper's July 30 account of the Al-Areesh's single Hormuz exit already recorded the counting split: Kpler 19, LSEG 26 on the same Wednesday. [2] The August 1 Houthi denial that Bab el-Mandeb transits carry a fee did not restore volume. [3] A Monday figure near 28 sits inside that same unresolved arithmetic.

The trough remains the 11 commodity vessels Kpler logged on July 26 after Houthi strikes on Yanbu and Jizan. [4] Seven of those 11 were oil tankers. A climb from 11 to the high 20s is real. It is not the 60-to-80 daily average the strait carried in ordinary years, and it is not proof the Cape detour has ended.

Hormuz stayed thinner still: nine confirmed transits on August 2, none on the established traffic-separation scheme. [1] Two-digit Red Sea days do not reopen either chokepoint.

-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels