The Suez Canal blockage of 2021 caused a global
trade disaster, and also gave us a fantastic meme template. But there are plenty more places on planet
earth where a similar blockage or trade disruption could happen. Let’s find out where they are. Sometimes, geography plays tricks, and global
chokepoints are places where geography has funnelled human activity into a narrow band
through convenience or necessity. For example - the Suez canal, which is an
artificial waterway that was dug through Egypt during the the 1800s, because that was way
more convenient than going the long way round. Without getting too bogged down by numbers,
the Suez canal is super important for oil from the Gulf countries and products manufactured
in Asia getting to Europe and North Africa, and vice versa. But, looking at the map we can see that the
Suez canal isn’t the only tight squeeze on this journey. Just at the other end of the Red Sea, nestled
between Yemen, Djibouti and Eritrea is this little stretch of water, called Bab el-Mandeb. Other than those vessels that start or end
their journey at one of the Red Sea ports, every vessel traversing the Suez canal will
also have to make its way through Bab el-Mandeb, so any issue with this strait could have a
devastating effect on global shipping in the same way. Bab el-Mandeb is about 30km wide, which is
narrow for such an important piece of water, but it’s nowhere near as skinny as the Suez,
so one ship running aground won’t block it. However, there are loads of other potential
threats to any waterway this narrow, such as regional conflicts, piracy and extreme
weather events. As we cross the Indian Ocean, we get to our
next chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca. This narrow stretch of water between the Malay
peninsula and the island of Sumatra, is responsible for the vast majority of large-scale maritime
traffic heading to or from East Asia in a westerly direction - again, oil from West
Asia is a big one here. It’s a similar width to Bab el-Mandeb, but
it feeds into the much much narrower Singapore Strait. Again, one ship won’t be able to block these
straits, but at times visibility can be greatly impaired by bushfires on Sumatra, and piracy
has been an issue in the past, although the neighbouring countries are working hard to
stamp it out. Likewise with the chokepoints of the Red Sea,
if there’s a problem with the strait, you can take the long-way round, although thankfully
it’s not quite so circuitous as circumnavigating Africa. The next closest passage, the Sunda Strait
is super shallow so that’s no good to cargo ships, but the Lombok Strait is actually deeper
than Malacca, so provides a good second option, although a significant detour. Continuing our journey east we cross the Pacific
and get to the Americas, and of course, the Panama canal. Many, many videos have been made about this
one, but in a nutshell it connects the east and west coasts of the americas, as well as
being another route between Asia and Europe. While the Panama has multiple lanes and sections
that traverse lakes, there definitely are sections that could be blocked by a single
ship. The Panama Canal also has locks, rather than
being a sea-level canal. While the Suez canal may be more affected
by the elements in the form of tides and sandstorms, the Panama Canal’s locks do introduce another
point which could fail and cause a blockage. If the locks were to somehow massively fail,
either mechanically or by another cause such as violent weather, or cyber attack, it could
cause a huge slow down in global trade. Although thankfully none of these scenarios
are very likely, given the thousands of ships that safely transit the canal every year. And finally, so the Europeans don’t feel
left out, let’s cross the Atlantic and pick one of the chokepoints over here to talk about. The Strait of Gibraltar is the western outlet
for the Mediterranean, just like the Suez canal is the artificial eastern outlet, along
with the Dardenelles and the Bosporous which connect to the Black Sea in the north east. The Strait of Gibraltar, has been strategically
important for centuries, since the seafaring nations of antiquity started trading in the
mediterranean. So much so that the British still manage to
possess Gibraltar, a tiny fortified piece of the Iberian peninsula to the north of the
strait, otherwise the strait is bound by Spain and Morocco. These days it connects the Suez canal with
the countries of northern Europe, and connects the rest of the Mediterranean with the Americas
and West Africa. At around 15km wide, it is thankfully again
not possible to be blocked by a single cargo ship, you can see tiny cargo ships traversing
the strait in this image, you’d need about 70 placed end-to-end to block it. But it could certainly be blockaded by a fleet
if catastrophic war were to somehow break out in the Mediterranean. In fact it, had been proposed in the 1920s
to purposefully block the strait with a dam, in order to generate electricity and lower
the sea level in the Mediterranean - an interesting but also very terrible idea. These were just a few of the Global Maritime
Chokepoints around the world, but there are obviously more. Like the Strait of Hormuz for example, which
I have made an entire video on already. If you’re interested in a part 2 video exploring
a few more chokepoints, let me know. Thanks for watching.
