Monday 1 March 2021 · below the Index · spike
Helios Ray hit by explosion in Gulf of Oman
The car carrier Helios Ray was struck by an explosion in the Gulf of Oman on February 26, 2021. Israel accused Iran of carrying out the attack, though the cause remained officially unexplained at the time of reporting. No injuries were reported.
Peak 73.1 on Monday 1 March 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 73% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Wednesday 9 September 2020.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: geopolitical pawn. Trade press was 0% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 77% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 0% of it was strongly negative in tone.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- tier C: only a Wikipedia article, GDELT sub-vocabulary term, or social per-term query fired — not yet confirmed as a real maritime incident (Phase C naming/is_maritime_incident does that).
- naming step found more than one plausible cause in the headlines (alternatives: ['unexplained explosion', 'Iranian attack']) — attribution.confidence is low; label may be an honest compound
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
- coverage filtered to articles matching this incident specifically (22/530 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
- coverage panel is based on only 22 articles (< 30) — directional, not precise
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Helios Ray hit by explosion in Gulf of Oman, peak 73.1 on 1 March 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-helios-ray-hit-by-explosion-in-gulf-of-oman/