Strait of Hormuz Shipping Lanes & Routes
Inside the traffic separation scheme that funnels the world's most valuable commercial shipping through a corridor just miles wide.
How ships transit the Strait of Hormuz
At its narrowest, between Iran's Larak Island and Oman's Quoin Island, the strait is about 21 nautical miles (39 km) wide. Deep-draught traffic is organised by an IMO-adopted Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS): an inbound (westbound) lane and an outbound (eastbound) lane, each roughly 2 nautical miles wide, separated by a 2-mile buffer zone. Most of the TSS lies within Omani territorial waters, and transit passage rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea keep the corridor open to ships of all flags.
The shipping route, end to end
A typical outbound voyage leaves a Gulf terminal, follows the deep-water channel south of the Iranian coast, turns through the TSS dog-leg around the Musandam Peninsula, and emerges into the Gulf of Oman — where many vessels call at Fujairah for bunkers before the long haul to Asia, Suez or beyond. Inbound ships reverse the pattern. The transit itself takes most merchant vessels 8 to 12 hours lane-to-lane.
Who uses the lanes
Tankers dominate, but the strait is also a container artery serving Jebel Ali — the Middle East's largest port — plus bulk carriers with grain and ore, general cargo ships, car carriers, LNG and LPG carriers, cruise ships and dense local fishing and ferry traffic that crosses the lanes. The live map's filters function as a cargo ship tracker, container ship tracker and bulk carrier tracker in one, and fleet operators can follow all their vessels simultaneously.
Traffic volumes and congestion
The strait handles roughly tens of thousands of transits a year — an average of a ship every few minutes at peak hours. Despite the volume, the TSS keeps head-on encounters rare; the greater everyday hazards are crossing dhows and fishing gear, summer haze cutting visibility, and the sheer density of anchored shipping off Fujairah.
Watch the lanes live
Open the live tracker and the TSS reveals itself: two neat streams of markers flowing in opposite directions around Musandam. It is one of the clearest demonstrations of organised maritime traffic anywhere on Earth.