If you thought the act of purchasing transportation was as simple as paying a carrier to haul your freight - well, think again.

Ro-ro ships carry trucks and other road vehicles across the Baltic Sea and also across Cook Strait, providing onboard overnight accommodations as well as food services. There may be scope to adapt that operational precedent to bypass roadway traffic congestion on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association (PMSA), a non-profit group that represents West Coast terminal operators and shipowners, has called for changes to the Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) put forward by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The International Union of Marine Insurance has called for better fire-fighting systems on board container ships, citing its concern that current provisions are insufficient given the growing size of container vessels and a recent spate of fires on board ships.

Shanghai International Shipping Institute recently published its Global Port Development Report for the second quarter of 2017, saying that cargo throughputs at major ports around the world continued to rise.

A new study mapping lightning around the globe finds lightning strokes occur nearly twice as often directly above heavily-trafficked shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea than they do in areas of the ocean adjacent to shipping lanes that have similar climates.

A growing number of companies are paying to track in real time everything from truckloads of pork chops to shipping containers full of exercise equipment.

Hyundai Merchant Marine, South Korea's largest container carrier, says it's planning to sail the Northern Sea Route by 2020.

Alok Sharma, head of commercial at Glencore subsidiary Inatech, recently spoke with The Maritime Executive about the outlook for bunkering. Inatech provides software solutions to both bunker suppliers and bunker buyers - giving it a perspective on both sides of the market.