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Minor problem with this theory.

After the Ostrogoths and Byzantines had fought back and forth across the peninsula several times, Italy had been largely depopulated.

There was little or nothing to buy food from overseas with, not to mention few merchants, especially specizliaing in bulk goods such as grain, and the few remaining people in Italy could certainly be supported by local agriculture, if there was any.

But the Byzantine temporary conquest of Africa did indeed leave a power vacuum that the Arabs took advantage of. Although the ease of conquest by Belisarius was an indication that the Vandals weren’t much of a power bloc anyway.

Oh, Rome was hurting for awhile but the rest of Italy didn't actually fare all that badly. Recall that was left of the non-Gothic western Empire had retired to Ravenna before the city's final change of hands. And note how quickly Venice arose as a maritime power beginning at that very time, partly through the dwindling connections to Ravenna, partly as a consequence of Lombard power and partly through still-maintained connections to Constantinople. That direction was northward and eastward, but as you state, and I agree, the south was dead.

There was, in support of your objection, a serious deterioration of the ability of the North African grain fields to support farming anyway. The Vandals had been terrible proprietors and the eastern Empire simply did not have the manpower to fill the vacuum. But it was undeniable that when Ostia died, Rome was crippled - Theoderic certainly thought so, and he was in a position to know. What his successors were squabbling over was a shell of what he once ruled.

The sea routes of communication had certainly changed - that was the original topic - but were undeniably still vital to trade on the Italian peninsula, and their control was contested by Muslim pirates nearly as long as Muslim armies threatened the land routes. And not just by Muslims. Constantinople would, I suspect, come to view Venice in a very different way by the time of the Fourth Crusade, a viper nurtured in its bosom whose army ended up sacking the place. After that, the Turks, and the whole thing began over again.