Here’s another post following up on the earlier one about free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the pinched off little turn in the Persian Gulf where the waterway is at its narrowest. On Bluesky, in response to my earlier post, one user pointed me to this video, a daily ~30 minute update on a Youtube channel called What’s Going on With Shipping.
I want to start by stating clearly the basis upon which I’m sharing this video. I’d never heard of the channel before a couple hours ago. It’s run by a guy named Sal Mercogliano who says he’s a former merchant mariner and historian who teaches maritime history and also consults on the topic. In other words, he appears to be a merchant shipping and tanker professional/nerd. And he runs this shipping news channel. I can’t independently vouch for his credibility. However I watched today’s episode and a number of factors – subscriber count, reliance on credentialed news articles and industry data sources, tone, meticulousness and more – make me think that it’s at least legit enough to get a beginning overview of the situation in the Gulf. I found it fascinating. It reminds me – sadly – of reporting on the supply chain breakdowns at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. You suddenly had to come up to speed on the complex but to most of us little understood world of global supply chains, the underbelly and machinery of how the modern interconnected world actually runs.
