The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is continuing to leave a significant number of commercial vessels and their crews immobilized in the Gulf, and industry leaders say that only explicit guarantees of safe passage - backed by the international community - will persuade operators to resume transits at previous volumes.
Industry officials speaking at the Posidonia shipping week in Athens described the situation as increasingly strained. They said hundreds of ships and about 20,000 seafarers remain stuck in the region with Hormuz largely closed, even though a fragile ceasefire is in place during the three-month-old conflict.
Rene Kofod-Olsen, group CEO of V.Group - a major global technical ship and crew manager that oversees around 800 vessels - told attendees that his company currently has 13 ships trapped in the Gulf, about half of them tankers. He stressed that an agreement to halt hostilities would not automatically clear the way for vessels to depart the area without further assurances.
"You are in a situation where you supposedly have a ceasefire," he said. "But you still have kinetic activity." Kofod-Olsen used "kinetic activity" to describe ongoing drone or missile strikes that continue to pose an operational threat. He warned that reinstating pre-conflict traffic levels - when roughly 125 vessels on average passed through the strait daily - would require "solid assurances of safe passage," and that the international community would need to play a role in providing those guarantees.
Kofod-Olsen added: "I dont believe that global shipping by definition will go through in a material way the Strait of Hormuz before those things are actually guaranteed."
Other shipping executives at the Athens gatherings echoed concerns that operational stress is growing even as they attempt to care for crews who remain in the Gulf. They said that while supply lines to crews are being maintained and it is possible to rotate teams inside the region, the overall pressure on ship owners, managers and insurers continues to intensify.
Alex Gregg-Smith, president for marine and offshore at Bureau Veritas, the ship safety certifier, told Reuters: "Ship owners are having to operate in irregular frameworks, which can be difficult or challenging for the industry, difficult and challenging for insurers as well. Its putting pressure on the owners operations."
Flag registries are also monitoring the situation. Dwain Hutchinson, managing director of the Bahamas maritime registry, said there are 14 Bahamas-flagged ships with over 900 seafarers on board currently inside the Gulf. He noted that this total includes smaller offshore vessels that normally operate in the area. Hutchinson emphasized that the registry prioritizes the safety and wellbeing of seafarers but does not impose bans on ships choosing to sail into the region.
"We think thats an owners decision and we hope that they will review the risk and take a balanced decision for operation in the region," he said.
Operators large and small are weighing those risks. Evangelos Marinakis, founder and chairman of Capital Maritime & Trading Corp - a major tanker operator - said his group "were lucky enough" not to have had any vessels inside the Gulf when the conflict began on February 28. Marinakis told the TradeWinds ship owners forum in Athens that the company would not accept the kind of exposure a casualty in the Gulf would represent.
Until credible, enforceable guarantees of safety are established and endorsed by relevant international actors, shipping executives signaled they expect the Strait of Hormuz to remain effectively off limits for routine global shipping movements, prolonging operational disruptions for owners, insurers, crewing organizations and the seafarers themselves.
Context note: The article reflects remarks made by industry representatives at maritime gatherings in Athens and reports on numbers of vessels and seafarers currently unable to transit the Gulf as described by those sources.