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] Tuesday does not publish a thicker Monday that the paper can cite. The count still holds thin.

The paper's Monday brief already refused to treat a high-20s bounce as a corridor. The trough remains 11 commodity vessels on July 26 after the Yanbu and Jizan strikes. [2] A climb from 11 to 30 is real. It is not the 60-to-80 daily average of ordinary years.

Hormuz stayed thinner: nine confirmed transits on August 2, none on the established traffic-separation scheme. [1] Two-digit Red Sea days do not reopen either chokepoint. The August 1 Houthi denial of a transit fee did not restore volume. [3]

Until Kpler or LSEG print a day that clears 41 and stays there, the passage count is a bounce inside a closed arithmetic.

One dark transit on Sunday is still in the Kpler tape. [1] Dark is not a reopening. It is a ship that did not want a name.

-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels