North Point of View: The Story of Two Canals

In this episode, Mark Hall and Dr. Walter Kemmsies discuss the Panama and Suez Canal.

Excerpt:

Mark: Two months ago, it felt like we were in borderline panic. Panama canal dried up, and the Houthis have taken over the Suez Canal, and it was a major threat to the East Coast.

Walter: The Houthi rebels received a lot of weaponry from Iran and they used the the weaponry to shoot at defenseless commercial ships. It's just an act of cowardice and stupidity. China made some kind of peace with the Houthis, and then the Houthis turned around and shot a Chinese container ship. They're pirates and they're not very smart pirates. In the very beginning, they shot a ship that had been leased by the Israelis. Then at the end of the of the year, it had been released to a Chinese entity. The Chinese were sailing it through the canal and the Houthis, took potshots at it. China is like, what the hell? We're not Israel, because the Houthis were only shooting at Israeli ships at the time. What happens is the database they were using on which ships are registered to whom you can read on the ship, the AIS signals. Well, there's AIS signals that come off the ships and you can go online to marinetraffic.com and you can see which ship it is. The problem is your ship registration database is old by about three months and so ooops.

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