The Red Sea crisis — which has been going on for a month now — has caused the second largest capacity drop in ocean shipping, according to a new Sea-Intelligence report, but only next to the Suez Canal issue back in 2021 when "Ever Given" ran aground and blocked the major waterway for six days.

The Danish maritime analysis firm said the ongoing attacks on commercial vessels at the Red Sea are causing a flux in current service networks and prompting a lot of uncertainty, especially in the services going from Asia to Europe.

"The red circles are all marking Chinese New Year/Golden Week, where capacity declines are catered to demand shortfalls occurring because of these holidays, and as such, are seen as normal market behaviour," the report said, referring to the illustration above.

It added that the two phases of the pandemic are marked with green arrows — the first phase, where it only impacted Chinese ports, and the second when it spread globally.

"We have marked the "Ever Given" event, and this is clearly seen to have the largest single impact," commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

"It should be noted, though, that part of this ended up overlapping with capacity changes related to Chinese New Year that year," he said.

"Finally, we can very clearly see the Red Sea crisis. With the "Ever Given" as the only exception, this is the largest single event – even larger than the early pandemic impact," Murphy further said.