Ship crews face weeks of uncertainty as Strait of Hormuz stays shut
For weeks, captains and seafarers tied up on vessels across the Persian Gulf have lived with the uncertainty of war at the doorstep of the Strait of Hormuz—unable to take routine passages through the waterway that normally handles a significant share of global oil and liquefied natural gas transits.
Indian Capt. Rahul Dhar said he and his crew have been stranded for about eight weeks on their tanker, sometimes watching drones and missiles explode as the strait remained effectively shut. Dhar said the crew’s morale is holding as they keep to routines, though the strain is becoming visible in how people cope day to day.
Dhar said a shaky ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran brought “a careful sense of hope,” but that the war’s larger timeline remains unclear. “Day to day, we try to keep things normal with open conversations and small team activities that help lift everyone’s spirits,” he told The Associated Press, describing how regular discussions and group activities are meant to manage stress while the disruption continues.
Other maritime workers described similar stress from the immediate risk environment. Union leader Manoj Kumar Yadav of the Forward Seamen’s Union of India said sailors on stranded ships endure days of fear and isolation while ships sit anchored near Iranian ports such as Bandar Abbas and Khorramshahr. He said explosions sometimes occur within a few hundred meters, and he described crews “watching blasts from their decks.”
Yadav said thousands of Indian sailors are among those stranded, including some on vessels positioned near Iranian ports, and he said the union has been fielding daily distress calls from crews and from families. He said many sailors have reported shortages of food and drinking water, with some vessels rationing supplies, and that communication with family members has been sporadic because of internet disruptions and signal jamming.
In some cases, contact has been possible only in brief bursts, and sailors have had to pay high roaming charges to reach home, Yadav said. He also said sailors’ families are growing increasingly anxious and demanding the safe return of the crews.
Elsewhere in the region, the problem has included not only risk from weapons but also difficulties planning safe navigation. Reza Muhammad Saleh, an Indonesian chief officer aboard a Greek-owned cargo ship stranded off Oman for more than a month, said a drone exploded near the port shortly after the vessel arrived March 3, and that at least two other incidents followed, prompting repeated evacuations to bunkers.
Saleh said the crew has been rattled by missile strikes and GPS disruptions that forced manual navigation. He said the biggest issue has been uncertainty: “We don’t know when Hormuz will be open again,” he told AP, adding, “Sometimes we think it’s safe, then suddenly it’s not. Today we’re safe. Tomorrow, nobody knows.”
Crew rotations also have become difficult even when ships are able to reposition to pick up provisions or attempt limited changes. Capt. Rajalingam Subramaniam, CEO of Fleet Management Limited, said his company communicates multiple times a day with dozens of stranded ships staffed by more than 400 seafarers, and that it maintains stock checks and pickup arrangements to keep food supplies available by moving vessels to nearby points where fresh and dry provisions can be collected.
Subramaniam said some crew changes still occur but in limited numbers. “Who wants to go on the ship?” he said, describing that inbound crew members have the right to refuse and the company respects those choices. He said many mariners have been in the Gulf since the war began, and he added that crews should also not be pressured into staying in a “warlike area” beyond what they signed up for so they do not become “the unintended collateral.”
On the wider policy front, maritime authorities and industry groups have continued to call for safe corridors for commercial traffic in the strait. Most ships have remained unable to pass through even as Iran has said the strait was open to vessels it perceived as non-hostile and demanded tolls for passage, AP reported. In the same period, Iran was said to have placed mines in the waterway, and Trump said last week that the U.S. was clearing Iranian mines and would “shoot and kill” boats laying mines in the area.
Under that heightened risk environment, IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said, “there is no safe transit anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz.” He said the risk calculus includes mines and attacks on ships, and he pointed to the difficulty of ensuring safe passage as the conflict continues.
The stress on seafarers is occurring amid other disruptions that have already strained global crews. The AP report said multiple crises in recent years have left many mariners stranded at sea, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea. Subramaniam said he worries that after the Iran war ends, fewer people will be willing to sign up, at a time when the shipping industry already faces a shortage of skilled seafarers.