Mounting attacks around the Strait of Hormuz and an oil leak off the United Arab Emirates have exposed questions about tanker emergency preparedness, according to gCaptain. Its analysis argues that safety arrangements developed primarily for accidents may leave merchant crews poorly equipped to manage the simultaneous fires, flooding and power failures caused by external strikes.
Citing Reuters reporting on 23 October, gCaptain said the Washington Institute for Near East Policy had recorded 28 confirmed and reported attacks during October and 113 since the US-Israeli war with Iran began on 28 February. October was the highest monthly tally in the institute’s records, which began in 2017. A separate Reuters review of IMO and MarineTraffic data found damage to more than 30 very large crude carriers, including 11 in October, representing about 3.5% of the global VLCC fleet.
High earnings continued to attract vessels despite sharply reduced traffic. Reuters reported daily freight rates exceeding $1 million for ships loading inside the Gulf, while IMF PortWatch recorded four Hormuz transits on 18 October, compared with a pre-war daily average of around 85. By September, the IMO had counted at least 22 seafarer deaths in 80 verified attacks around Hormuz since late February, gCaptain reported.
The UAE environment ministry confirmed on 23 October that response teams were containing oil escaping from an offshore tanker. Beach closures followed in Umm Al Quwain, Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah. The ministry neither identified the ship nor established the cause. According to gCaptain, international maritime agencies identified the vessel as Gem No.2, a 330-metre tanker hit in a suspected drone attack on 9 or 10 October. Twenty-two Indian seafarers were rescued from it.
The publication’s analysis distinguished conventional accident protection from the demands of attack damage: a single strike can compromise fire barriers, cargo lines, electrical cables and firefighting systems together. It called for combined-emergency drills, reviews of emergency power and pump protection, independent shutdown controls and pollution-response planning. Rather than advocating warship-style construction, gCaptain urged owners and technical managers to strengthen practical resilience, alongside clearer abandonment guidance and crew welfare measures. It also proposed that flag states and classification societies share anonymised evidence of which shipboard systems survived attacks and which failed.