Spot rates have been declining steadily for several months now. The shipping lines can react to this in one of two ways. One would be to increase blank sailings, decrease supply, and halt the decline in spot rates. The other would be that despite the decline, spot rates are still much higher than before the Red Sea crisis and the pre-pandemic levels, which would potentially incentivise shipping lines to book as much cargo as possible at current rates, to capitalise on this. The latter would dissuade the blanking of sailings but will lead to more rate erosion in the longer term. (....)