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While the world has spent 2026 watching the Strait of Hormuz, the most dangerous water in the world for a merchant sailor is somewhere else entirely. The Black Sea has become the deadliest shipping route on the planet — and the numbers behind that shift are stark.
More than 570 vessels have been struck in the Black Sea this year, according to the maritime security firm Ambrey, and at least 40 sailors have been killed. Around the Strait of Hormuz and the wider Middle East, by comparison, 24 seafarer deaths have been confirmed. The sea the news has largely ignored is killing more sailors than the one it cannot stop talking about.
The numbers
The escalation has been fast. About 387 ships were hit between July and September — more than five times the previous quarter's tally — and attacks averaged more than four a day in the third quarter. October alone was the bloodiest month yet: 34 sailors were killed or reported missing, Russian drones struck at least eight commercial ships, and four of them sank.
One of the October victims was the bulk carrier Khoriv, which sank after an attack off the coast of Romania on October 23, killing one seafarer and leaving three missing. Ambrey attributes roughly 90% of the attacks over the past 45 days to Russia. The Financial Times first called the Black Sea the world's deadliest shipping route in late October; the Wall Street Journal reached the same conclusion this week.
The comparison with Hormuz is what makes the figures so striking. The International Maritime Organization's data show about 120 reported incidents in Hormuz and the wider Middle East, against hundreds in the Black Sea. Attacks on Black Sea shipping are running at roughly six times the level recorded in the Persian Gulf. Both the Financial Times and the Journal note that reporting from both regions is patchy, so the true scale may be worse than the official counts.
How it escalated
The campaign has a clear timeline. Russia began its offensive against the Odesa region in July, targeting port facilities and the ships that serve them, which forced Ukraine to suspend all of its maritime exports. Ukraine retaliated with drone attacks on Russian shipping, including a campaign that extended to the Kerch Strait. In October the conflict widened again: drones began targeting ships sailing near Bulgaria and Romania, and along the Danube River — waters that belong to NATO members.
Russia has admitted to attacking only two freighters, both of which it claimed were carrying weapons bound for Ukrainian territory. Ukraine says the targets are overwhelmingly civilian: grain carriers, oil tankers and cargo ships moving food and fuel. On November 11, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a press briefing in Denmark, alongside Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, that Russia is trying to destroy all ships in the Black Sea regardless of their country of origin, and that the sea remains blocked for agricultural exports.
The economic damage
The cost of sailing the Black Sea has exploded. Lloyd's List reports that hull war insurance premiums for the Black Sea have reached 20% of a vessel's insured value — compared with 7% to 9% in the Middle East Gulf, where some policies have been offered at 5% despite more than 110 claims and estimated payouts of about $2.5 billion. In September, the Joint War Committee, the body that sets insurance risk areas, extended its highest-risk listing to almost the entire Black Sea, excluding only the territorial waters of Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia.
Ukraine's export economy is paying the price. Seaborne agricultural exports fell to 1.4 million tonnes in August — about 75% less than before the war — and shipments from Black Sea and Azov Sea ports totalled just 201,000 tonnes in September, one-sixth of the previous month's volume. Every ship that stays away is food that does not reach its buyers, and every premium that rises is a cost passed on to someone, somewhere.
A legal black hole
Perhaps the most unsettling part of the story is that there is no clear law for it. Andrej Klimenko, director of the Strategic Research Institute, which specialises in the Black Sea, has described the situation as a black hole: there is no international legislation regulating drone attacks on merchant ships. The rules of war at sea were written for navies and mines, not for cheap drones that can be launched at a grain carrier from hundreds of kilometres away.
The European Parliament has called for an EU naval operation in the Black Sea, citing the deadly attacks. But a naval operation is a long way from a solution, and the attacks have continued through every statement and resolution so far.
Why it matters beyond the Black Sea
There are two reasons this story deserves more attention than it has received. The first is human: 40 sailors dead is a toll that would dominate the news if it had happened in a single incident, and it has happened instead in dozens of small ones, spread across months, far from the cameras. The second is structural: if drones can close a sea to commercial shipping without a formal blockade and without clear legal consequences, every other chokepoint in the world — Hormuz, the Red Sea, the South China Sea — is more vulnerable than it looks.
Hormuz still matters, and the war in Iran is now in its eighth month. But the deadliest water in the world this year is not the one on the front pages. It is the Black Sea — and the ships keep sailing into it, because the world still needs what those ships carry.
For more on the war's economic front, see how Ukraine's strikes have hit 30% of Russia's oil refining capacity and Iran's new tactics around the Strait of Hormuz. According to NDTV Profit, reporting the Wall Street Journal's findings and The New Voice of Ukraine, reporting the Financial Times, more than 570 vessels have been struck in the Black Sea in 2026.