Rose George wants the general populace to see the wonder of the shipping industry. She presents the good, the bad, and the awe-inspring aspects of seafaring in her TED talk, Inside the Secret Shipping Industry.
Shipping is responsible for 90% of world trade and has quadrupled in size since 1970. The world is dependent on the 100,000 current sea vessels to deliver goods, now more than ever, and no replacement industry is being researched or designed.
http://www.ted.com/talks/rose_george_inside_the_secret_shipping_industry.html
The general public is more than familiar with Microsoft but not Maersk, even though the two companies have similar annual revenue. The First Sealord of the British Royal Navy has said that society has a sea blindness, ignoring the water as a place of industry.
Rose took a trip on the Maersk Kendal, a mid-sized container ship with around 700,000 shipping containers heading from England to Singapore. They traveled through five seas, two oceans and nine ports over five weeks.
The first revelation was the efficiency of the industry. Ships are heavily automated and instead of a navy ship with thousands of sailors the Kendal has twenty one crew members. The pace of modern shipping is fast and punishing, with crew members on sea for two months at a time.
Because of an innovation called Flags of Convenience a ship can fly the flag of another country beyond the country that owns and operates it. This can be done to lower registration fees and taxes or to find cheaper labor. Flags of Convenience also bring the opportunity for varied crews. Rose's crew during her trip included members from China, Burma, Moldavia, Romania, India and the Phillipines.
When measuring carbon emissions per ton per mile shipping is greener than aviation and trucking, but due to the massive nature of the shipping industry there's still heavy amounts of pollution generated. In 2009 it was calculated that the fifteen largest ships in the world give off as much soot and noxious gases as all of the cars in the world. Acoustic pollution can also damage the habitat of sea creatures, especially whales and dolphins.
As engineers the opportunities for innovation and optimization in the shipping industry are almost limitless. There are opportunities for mechanical, electrical, industrial, civil, chemical, packaging and manufacturing engineers to research design and build products to bring us into the next century.
http://www.ted.com/talks/rose_george_inside_the_secret_shipping_industry.html