The Hormuz strait crisis has affected more than 20,000 seafarers, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), including crews stranded aboard vessels that cannot leave. In their September 10 analysis for The Conversation, Anita Rayegani, Eka Siradze and Patricia Kennedy examine the human consequences of the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Previous maritime research links unsafe conditions, disrupted sleep and uncertain schedules to poorer mental health. The IMO also records deaths, injuries and missing seafarers. [1]
Hormuz Strait Crisis: What Is Happening?
Rayegani, Siradze and Kennedy describe a shipping disruption in which danger and uncertainty extend beyond fuel supplies to the people operating commercial vessels. What makes the Hormuz strait crisis a health concern? Some crews cannot leave their ships, while the IMO’s incident records document physical harm. The organization prepared an evacuation plan for roughly 6,000 seafarers and reported that approximately 2,900 had departed before the plan paused, according to the authors. Their account does not establish how many affected workers have developed mental health conditions. [1]
Nearly 1.9 million seafarers staff the global merchant fleet. Around 80% of international goods trade travels by sea. Rayegani and her colleagues give these global figures to explain the workforce’s importance; neither figure measures traffic through Hormuz alone. Public discussion of disrupted trade can obscure the circumstances of people who must keep working while their departure dates remain uncertain. For these crews, the workplace is also their living space, often for months at a time. [1]
The IMO figures describe exposure and physical harm. They do not provide a mental health prevalence estimate for crews in Hormuz. [1]
Why Does Life Aboard Add Strain?
Brooks and Greenberg’s 2022 systematic review in BMC Psychology brings together 63 studies of maritime personnel, linking poorer mental health with feeling unsafe, irregular or prolonged working hours, inadequate sleep, weak support, uncertain schedules and extended periods at sea. Ships operate continuously. Crew members rotate through watches while living in confined accommodation, and those work patterns can disturb the circadian rhythm (the body’s internal clock). Separation from family adds another difficulty: the people who normally provide support may be far away, while work and rest take place within the same small social environment. During the Hormuz strait crisis, danger can compound pressures that already exist in maritime employment. [1, 2]
The World Health Organization describes burnout as a work-related condition involving exhaustion, detachment or cynicism, and reduced effectiveness, as the source analysis explains. Depression is a separate concern. Maritime research connects difficult working conditions with stress, depressive symptoms and burnout, but those outcomes should not become interchangeable labels for every tired or distressed crew member. Jonglertmontree and colleagues’ 2022 scoping review in BMC Public Health also examines seafarers’ mental health problems and associated factors. [1–3]
Researchers identify associations across working conditions and wellbeing. They do not establish a single inevitable response to danger, or diagnose an individual seafarer from a vessel’s location.
What Does Conflict Research Show?
Hebbar and Khabeishvili examined the effects of extreme events on seafarers in a 2024 Ukraine case study published in International Maritime Health. Their survey included 319 people who had sailed through the Black Sea conflict zone. More than 70% reported threats to their safety, 95% recalled increased stress or anxiety on at least one occasion, and almost 80% felt that their mental health had suffered. Participants also reported sleep loss. Family contact declined, too. Rayegani and colleagues recount both findings. [1, 4]
The Black Sea survey concerns another conflict. Its percentages cannot serve as measured outcomes for the Hormuz strait crisis, even though both situations raise questions about safety, disrupted routines and separation from home. Self-reported distress is not a clinical diagnosis. In particular, reporting anxiety at least once does not establish an anxiety disorder or show how long symptoms lasted. The survey supports concern about conflict exposure without supplying a forecast for every crew in a different region. [1, 4]
PerEXP Teamworks also examines climate change as a threat to health and heat-related mortality in Europe. Here, the question concerns working conditions during conflict: how danger interacts with rest, family contact and the ability to leave a vessel.
Can Seafarers Refuse Dangerous Routes?
The International Transport Workers’ Federation and the Joint Negotiating Group designated the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman a “Warlike Operations Area” on March 5, 2026, according to the source analysis. That date marks the designation. It does not, by itself, establish when the crisis began. For workers on covered vessels, the designation brought enhanced pay, doubled compensation for death or disability, and a right to refuse entry into the area. [1]
Covered seafarers could return home at company expense, with compensation equivalent to two months of basic wages, Rayegani and colleagues report. Nautilus secured double pay. That arrangement covered Dutch-flagged vessels. Coverage depends on the applicable agreement. These arrangements do not establish identical rights for every person facing the Hormuz strait crisis, because the protection described attaches to particular vessels and employment agreements rather than automatically reaching the entire workforce. [1]
A seafarer’s control over a hazardous assignment matters to the wellbeing discussion because previous research associates limited control over work and uncertain schedules with poorer mental health. The agreements address some of those conditions by providing a route home, although the source supplies no measurement of their psychological effects. Rayegani, Siradze and Kennedy recommend a genuine ability to leave dangerous areas as part of wider employer responsibility. [1, 2]
How Does Unequal Pay Matter?
Rayegani and colleagues describe a review of 24 studies linking an imbalance between effort and reward with burnout. Higher wages, family benefits and training opportunities accompanied greater job satisfaction. The studies were cross-sectional (they examined workers at one point in time), so they cannot establish that low or unequal pay directly causes mental illness. Pay is an associated working condition; the evidence does not isolate it as the sole explanation for distress at sea. [1, 3]
Aspers and Sandberg’s merchant-ship research in Global Networks describes colleagues doing the same tasks under markedly different employment conditions. Some had permanent contracts, better monthly pay and shorter tours; others earned less on temporary contracts and spent longer at sea. Nationality and residence can determine the labour market and agreement that apply. During the Hormuz strait crisis, the findings offer context for understanding why shared exposure to danger need not mean shared employment protections. [1, 5]
The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights found discrimination against Filipino and Indonesian seafarers in two linked August 2025 decisions, as the source analysis reports. The analysis gives a cooking-job example. A European night cook earned at least twice as much as an Indonesian colleague. In the Filipino case, the Institute accepted that pay differences contributed to class divisions aboard ship. Its decisions are non-binding. The Institute is an official equality body. Its findings are not court judgments. [1]
What Would Better Protection Involve?
The Maritime Labour Convention has been in force since 2013 and addresses employment terms, accommodation, healthcare and social protection, according to Rayegani and colleagues. Its binding wage standard requires payment at least monthly and an account of amounts owed and paid. Equal pay appears in a separate guideline. That guideline supports equal remuneration for work of equal value on the same ship without discrimination, but it does not establish a universally enforceable equal-pay rule. [1]
Employers should provide safe staffing, sufficient rest, reliable communication with home, access to medical and psychological care, and supportive management, the authors argue, while also recommending transparent wage bands and independent routes to challenge discriminatory pay. These are recommendations, not tested outcomes of a Hormuz intervention. Governments and shipping companies would need to address the conditions of employment as well as immediate physical safety, including how overtime and hazard payments reflect work and risk regardless of nationality or residence. [1]
Researchers still need direct evidence about mental health among crews affected by the Hormuz strait crisis. How widespread is distress, and how long does it persist after workers leave danger? The supplied analysis provides no answers to those questions; its strongest support comes from earlier maritime reviews and conflict research, while the IMO figures document the immediate human exposure.
- ONLINE NEWS Rayegani, A., Siradze, E., & Kennedy, P. (2026, September 10). Strait of Hormuz crisis: How danger and uncertainty can affect the mental health of seafarers. The Conversation. [Article Link]
- ACADEMIC JOURNAL Brooks, S. K., & Greenberg, N. (2022). Mental health and psychological wellbeing of maritime personnel: A systematic review. BMC Psychology, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00850-4 [Article Link]
- ACADEMIC JOURNAL Jonglertmontree, W., Kaewboonchoo, O., Morioka, I., & Boonyamalik, P. (2022). Mental health problems and their related factors among seafarers: A scoping review. BMC Public Health, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12713-z [Article Link]
- ACADEMIC JOURNAL Hebbar, A. A., & Khabeishvili, T. (2024). Impact on seafarers of extreme events: A case study arising out of the situation in Ukraine. International Maritime Health, 75(3), 190–203. https://doi.org/10.5603/imh.100443 [Article Link]
- ACADEMIC JOURNAL Aspers, P., & Sandberg, C. (2020). Sailing together from different shores: Labour markets and inequality on board merchant ships. Global Networks, 20(3), 454–471. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12252 [Article Link]
APA 7: TWs Editor. (2026, September 10). Mental health at sea during the Hormuz strait crisis. PerEXP Teamworks.
