Compounding Disruption: What Maritime Networks Are Really Telling Us in 2026

Based on Pierre Garreau’s analysis presented at the Breakthrough x Searoutes webinar, April 30, 2026.

When Bab el-Mandeb effectively closed to commercial shipping in late 2023, most logistics teams treated it as a temporary shock. Two and a half years later, it is clear this was a structural reset; one compounded by port congestion, regulatory escalation, and a carrier fleet that was never designed to absorb this level of simultaneous pressure.

At Searoutes, we process AIS signals for approximately 70,000 active vessels in real time, model over 100 million route combinations, and serve freight forwarders, BCOs, and logistics platforms globally. What follows is what the data is telling us right now.

Three Stress Zones Feeding Each Other

Red Sea / Gulf of Aden. Since November 2023, over 190 Houthi attacks on commercial vessels have effectively closed Bab el-Mandeb to routine commerce. Container traffic through the Suez Canal is down approximately 75% versus 2023. Virtually no major liner service transits the Red Sea today. The sole exception is Gemini Cooperation (Maersk/Hapag-Lloyd), piloting a limited re-entry on their ME11 service (also referred to as IMX) under naval escort. That is not a recovery signal; it is a controlled experiment on one service out of 57.

North European ports. All diverted volume concentrates somewhere. Rotterdam and Hamburg are recording vessel dwell times 3 to 5 days above historical norms. In April 2025, 935,000 TEUs were simultaneously at anchor across North European and Mediterranean anchorages; 32% of the global total.

Asian transshipment hubs. Busan, Tanjung Pelepas, Singapore, Colombo: all running 10 to 14 day delays. A missed connection at Singapore cascades downstream. The mathematics compound non-linearly.

What the Data Is Telling Us

We ingest AIS signals and run positions through our proprietary routing model; accounting for vessel draft, weather, port schedules, and lane-specific constraints. For every vessel, we produce a predicted ETA at every waypoint, not just the final discharge port. The delta between the carrier’s published schedule and our model ETA is what we call schedule slippage.

What we observe: systematic slippage of 7 to 14 days on Cape-routed Asia to Europe services. A vessel losing 3 days at Rotterdam due to berth congestion arrives at Busan 3 days late. Over 6 rotations in a year, that 3-day deficit becomes a 10-plus day structural lag. It does not self-correct without an active blank sailing or fleet injection.

Four signals we watch as leading indicators (2 to 3 weeks ahead of what shippers feel at delivery):

All four are available via Searoutes’ vessel tracking API.

EU ETS: From Compliance to Commercial Leverage

EU ETS is no longer theoretical. It is a line item on every freight invoice touching a European port. Coverage reached 70% in 2025 and 100% in 2026; with methane and nitrous oxide added to scope this year, a critical development for LNG vessels. EUAs traded at €68 to €76 per tonne throughout 2025.

Using our own API methodology on a 20,000 TEU vessel from Singapore to Rotterdam via Cape: the EU ETS cost lands at approximately €45 per TEU at carrier level. Maersk’s Q1 2026 published surcharge was approximately €59 per TEU on the same lane; a delta of around €14 per TEU that, per T&E analysis, represents embedded margin in the surcharge structure.

The total industry EU ETS bill from container shipping exceeded $1.4 billion in 2025. With 100% coverage from 2026, that figure could reach $2.7 billion. Every cent lands on shippers as surcharges; unless you audit them.

The routing arbitrage carriers are using. Because EU ETS covers only 50% of non-EU to EU voyage legs, some carriers redesign service patterns to minimise exposure. A particularly effective tactic is calling at a UK port before entering EU waters; the UK operates its own separate ETS, which significantly reduces the EU ETS baseline on the subsequent leg. Services such as CMA CGM and MSC’s NEWMO, MSC’s Swan service, and CMA CGM and COSCO’s EPIC have adopted this approach. A shipper paying a standard EU ETS surcharge may be paying for exposure the carrier has structurally reduced; without vessel-specific data, there is no way to know.

Three Things Shippers Should Do Now

Audit your Scope 3 CO2e baseline. If your calculations still assume Suez routing, you are underreporting. A Shanghai to Hamburg voyage via the Cape emits 38% more CO2e than the traditional Suez route. Under CSRD, that is an audit risk; not a rounding error.

Verify your carrier surcharges. EU ETS surcharges vary significantly by carrier methodology and are not always applied to the vessel that physically carried your cargo. Without shipment-level vessel-specific data, you cannot challenge what you are charged.

Watch leading indicators, not just ETAs. By the time a delay appears in a carrier’s schedule update, it has already been building for two to three weeks in our vessel tracking data. The shippers acting earliest have the most options.