What is the maximum depth of the Strait of Hormuz?

Sources vary and the figure depends on where in the strait you measure. Use a surveyed chart rather than a summary figure if the answer matters operationally.

Is the Strait of Hormuz deep enough for supertankers?

Yes, along the shipping lanes. A laden VLCC draws roughly 20 metres and the lanes are routed through water that accommodates that with clearance.

Why do ships stay in the lanes?

Because depth is not uniform. Water shoals toward the islands and the Musandam shore, and the lanes follow the reliably deep channel.

How deep is the Strait of Hormuz?

Deep enough for the biggest tankers afloat, and shallow enough in the wrong places that the lanes are not where they are by accident.

Why the answer is a range, not a number

People asking how deep the strait is usually want one figure. There is not one, and the pages that give you a single number are quietly rounding away the thing that matters.

The Persian Gulf as a whole is shallow — a broad, gently shelving basin. The strait itself is deeper, and the deepest water runs in a channel rather than evenly across. That channel is where the lanes are.

What a loaded tanker needs

A fully laden very large crude carrier draws in the region of 20 metres. On top of that a bridge team wants under-keel clearance: a margin for squat, for swell, for tidal state and for chart error.

So the operative question is never the maximum depth of the strait. It is whether the charted depth along the intended track, at the intended state of tide, leaves enough water under a ship that cannot stop quickly. The lanes exist precisely so that question has a reliable answer.

Where it shoals

Toward the Iranian islands on the northern side, and along the Musandam shore to the south, depths reduce and the seabed becomes irregular. The island chain is the visible part of that; the banks around it are not.

This is the reason the strait is narrower in practice than on a map. Twenty-one miles of water is not twenty-one miles of navigable water.

Where to get real figures

For anything operational, use current charts and notices to mariners, not a web page. Admiralty and NOAA publications carry surveyed depths; a summary article carries someone’s recollection of them.

This page deliberately gives no single depth figure for that reason.

Common questions

What is the maximum depth of the Strait of Hormuz?: Sources vary and the figure depends on where in the strait you measure. Use a surveyed chart rather than a summary figure if the answer matters operationally.
Is the Strait of Hormuz deep enough for supertankers?: Yes, along the shipping lanes. A laden VLCC draws roughly 20 metres and the lanes are routed through water that accommodates that with clearance.
Why do ships stay in the lanes?: Because depth is not uniform. Water shoals toward the islands and the Musandam shore, and the lanes follow the reliably deep channel.