Panama City (AFP) – The Panama Canal will restrict the number of vessels transiting the crucial waterway from Friday for the second time ever due to drought caused by the El Nino climate phenomenon.
Five percent of global trade passes through the canal that connects the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic.
The waterway is set to reduce daily traffic from 36 to 32 ships a day in an effort to conserve water amid a severe drought likely to last until mid-2027.
Canal authorities are also reducing the permitted draft of vessels -- how deep they sit in the water -- from 15.24 to 14.63 meters.
Panama has declared an emergency over El Nino, which raises surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean and causes global changes in winds and rainfall as well as erratic weather conditions.
The canal's incoming administrator Ilya Espino de Marotta has acknowledged the current "challenging" conditions.
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