Six tankers. That is how many made it through the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. No liquefied natural gas carriers were visible at all.
Some ships simply switched off their tracking signals. Others avoided the strait entirely, transferring oil ship to ship out in the Gulf of Oman instead.
Shipping data tracked by Kpler put tanker traffic at its lowest level in roughly two months.
Hormuz is not just another shipping lane. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas moves through it.
When traffic through a corridor that important drops by more than half in a matter of days, the shock does not stay contained in the Gulf.
It shows up in Brent crude, in Asian trade balances, in European gas storage, in tanker insurance premiums, in refinery margins, and eventually at the pump and in your grocery bill.
The deeper story is not that Hormuz remains dangerous. It is that the global economy is already paying a tax on that danger, well before anyone declares the strait fully closed.
That tax began accumulating the moment shipowners stopped trusting the water.
A Ceasefire That Never Quite Held