What Are Sea Lines of Communication?

Sea Lines of Communication are major maritime routes between ports around the world and are used for trade, military/naval, logistics and other purposes.

SLOCs, or Sea Lines of Communication, function as commercial trade routes in peacetime, but during wartime, they acquire a strategic place. The party that controls them has the upper hand, as seen in many historic naval battles.

SLOCs are also strategic waterways vital for nations to access resources in faraway regions. Hence, protecting the sea lines of communication becomes essential for the free flow of global maritime trade.

Importance of Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs)

SLOCs are primary maritime trade lanes, often referred to as the arteries of a region’s economy. They promote economic development, sustain international trade, and act as crucial paths during wars or other emergencies.

When SLOCs are secure, maritime trade flourishes. The volume of seaborne trade in 2021 stood at 11 billion tonnes, a 3.2% increase from 2020.

The volume of maritime trade has almost doubled since the 1990s, when it was approximately four billion tonnes. The capacity of the global merchant fleet has also risen by over 40% between 2013 and 2021, reaching 2.1 million deadweight tonnes in 2021.

Protecting Sea Lines of Communication

The naval concept applicable to protecting SLOCs and maritime chokepoints is called sea control.

In the same way, maritime chokepoints are constricted yet heavily trafficked waterways separating oceans and seas. Due to security threats like pirates, they can be vulnerable to attacks or dangerous to navigate in some regions.

Lawful sea control helps deny or limit the enemy’s capacity to threaten SLOCs and chokepoints or use them for war-supporting shipping.

It also allows states to protect their navigational rights and prevent unlawful interference. Protecting SLOCs and chokepoints ensures that waterways remain open for trade and navigation but shielded from hostilities by enemies.

SLOCs and Geography

SLOCs can also be considered maritime routes taken by a ship to transit from Point A to B. This route should be short, safe, and economical for shipping cargo.

SLOCs have different lengths, depending on the landmass, choke points, reefs, and port and harbour locations.

There is a link between SLOCs and the geography of a region when making a strategy. Economists and the Military focus on geography while devising strategic relations and requirements.

For an Economist, the shortest distance, low cost of transportation and timely cargo delivery are essential factors in developing a maritime economic strategy.

When the military studies the SLOCs, geography is the major focus regarding the deployment of forces. It considers the positions of allies and enemies and the terrain that one must cross to get the help of the other.

A Few Important SLOCs

Several significant SLOCs and maritime chokepoints lie in the Indian Ocean, and a massive volume of international seaborne trade from the Persian Gulf region, Europe, and Africa passes through this ocean. This trade, especially of oil, impacts every aspect of people’s everyday lives worldwide.

Maritime chokepoints are narrow passages within the SLOCs, and a few of them in Southeast Asia, like Lombok, Sunda, and Malacca Straits, are important for the economic development of the Asia-Pacific.

More than one-third of the world’s cargo ships sail through these chokepoints. Ship traffic through the Malacca Strait is much higher than the traffic through the Panama or the Suez Canal.

The shipping routes or SLOCs that pass through the Indian Ocean and enter Southeast Asia are of great geostrategic importance to the U.S., Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan.

India is located halfway between the Strait of Malacca and the Hormuz Strait. While there are alternative routes to the Malacca Strait, there are no other routes to transport Arabian Gulf oil except through land pipelines.

Hence, any contingencies in Hormuz Strait can impact the region. Indian Peninsula dominates the Sea Lines of Communication from the Persian Gulf before they round off south of Dundra Head in Sri Lanka.

Also, these SLOCs pass near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands before they enter the Malacca Strait. The commercial ship traffic passing through Malacca Strait goes from near the Indian region of maritime interest and so any contingencies or security issues in the strait places responsibility on India for preserving order at sea.

Threats to Sea Lines of Communication

Pirate Attacks

Southeast Asia is a piracy hotspot and witnesses many incidents throughout the year, especially in the Malacca and Singapore Straits. These waterways witness the heaviest maritime traffic congestion, and hundreds of ships transit them annually.

VLCCs reduce speed while crossing the waterways as the presence of shallow areas and shipwrecks makes them dangerous to navigate. Pirates target ships in this region as they can get away quickly due to the geography, leading to a rise in piracy attacks, which are becoming common in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

Seafarers are often left traumatised after such attacks on ships, which lead to violence, abductions, harassment or even killings and torture.

In 2022, 58 piracy attacks were recorded in Southeast Asian waters. In the first part of 2023, 41 such attacks were reported in the Malacca and Singapore Straits, compared to 27 in the same period in 2022.

Poverty, inflation, unemployment and the rise of geopolitical tensions have contributed to maritime piracy, per experts.

Drug Trafficking

Southwest and Southeast Asia are two of the most prominent heroin and opium-producing areas in the world. Myanmar tops the list with an annual production of over 2360 tonnes of smoke opium and is a centre for heroin refining.

Heroin from Myanmar passes through its neighbouring countries and is trafficked through unmarked land routes and sea routes, from Lashio to Rangoon and other ports like Moulin, for shipping it to the western countries.

These activities take place through the Indian Ocean despite strict laws and regulations. However, sometimes, the traffickers are caught, and other times, they succeed in fleeing.

Illegal Fishing

For billions of people, fish constitutes the primary protein source, and more than half of the world’s catch comes from Asian waters, while five of the main fish-producing nations are in Pacific Asia.

However, as fishing grounds get depleted, competition for new stocks intensifies. This is what has been happening in many areas. For instance, fishermen from Thailand and China encroach upon the exclusive economic zones of neighbouring countries.

Maritime security is challenged by illegal fishing, which depletes marine resources and undermines the livelihood of the local communities.

Marine Pollution

Malacca Strait is a busy waterway which hundreds of ships and oil tankers cross daily. Hence, the sea lane is prone to ship accidents like collisions, groundings and worse, oil spills which could lead to its temporary closure, affecting shipping and impacting its marine ecology, killing sea creatures, birds and any life that thrives near the coasts.

The MV Exxon Valdez disaster has left a deep impact on the region and in the minds of environmentalists.

Also, marine debris like fishing gear, derelict ships and their parts, etc, can cause harm to marine life.

Smuggling

Millions of people leave their countries in search of better economic opportunities. Per ILO, over 7 million Asians work overseas, of which half are illegal migrants.

Around a million people are smuggled illegally annually, and most of them come from China, Iran, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Sudan etc.

Smuggling through sea lanes is the cheapest and easiest form of illegal transport however it is also dangerous. Almost every day, we hear of migrant ships which sink due to being overcrowded.

Smuggling has increased, and most people are headed to the U.S., West Europe and Australia. People from war-torn countries like Syria also move to other Middle Eastern nations.

People are ready to take long and dangerous journeys for the sake of a secure life, though sadly, they put themselves in even more danger by crossing international waters illegally.

Sea mines

Sea mines can be laid by naval vessels when undertaking mining operations. Mines are enough to deter ships from entering a sea lane. Mines were laid in 1984 in the Red Sea and in the Persian Gulf in 1987 to demonstrate their lethality.

Human Errors

Although many advancements have been made in navigation and shipbuilding, accidents can occur as a result of human negligence or equipment failure due to a lack of proper maintenance and onboard repairs.

Collisions are a common occurrence and sometimes they can be so severe, that it becomes difficult to separate the two ships, posing a major problem for salvage and rescue operations.

Vessel Groundings can also happen due to the crew’s carelessness. A ship can be left at the mercy of the seas in case of a breakdown of ship machinery.

Often shipping companies do not undertake proper maintenance and dry docking of their vessels to ascertain their seaworthiness which is also a cause of accidents.

This issue is complicated by a lack of expertise among the crew to handle flooding, undertake damage control or handle fires, as they do not get appropriate training in some cases.

Strategies to Safeguard SLOCs

• Countries can come together to conduct joint search and rescue operations.
• Contribute forces for anti-piracy patrols
• Build joint forces for countering piracy, drug smuggling and illegal migrations which threaten maritime security in the sea lines of communication.
• Allocate ships for environmental protection and surveillance in sensitive regions.
• Joint development of maritime technologies aimed at the protection of SLOCs.
• Collaboration is needed to develop and implement a joint strategy for the security of ports, harbours, and marine national parks.
• Conducting naval and coast guard exercises and patrols to improve transparency and protect the marine environment.
  Adequate use of satellites, uncrewed surface vessels, AI and other data platforms to monitor high-risk areas.

Sea Lines of Communication, or SLOCs, are the cornerstone of world maritime trade, without which the global economy would suffer tremendously. It is through these routes that ships loaded with raw materials, machinery, clothes, food, and fuel pass to reach their destinations, sometimes in the remotest places on Earth. Protecting these critical waterways is important for the smooth flow of trade and commerce and freedom of navigation.

You might also like to read-

• What is Transpolar Sea Route?
• 5 Most Dangerous Sea Routes in the World
• 10 Major Sea Routes of the World
• 10 Major Oil Shipping Routes in The World