For World Maritime Day, a ship docked at night in the Port of Cape Town, South Africa

© Zero Creatives/Science Photo Librar

Connecting to the sea. High seas commerce

Unless you work in shipping, most of us don’t think about how much global shipping affects our daily lives. Most of the consumer goods you buy travelled across an ocean on a massive container ship. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) estimates that 80 percent of global trade relies on ships. The IMO created World Maritime Day to call attention to the hard work they do finding the most efficient and safest shipping routes around the globe, making their work, and our lives, easier.