Look around you. The furniture in the room, the car's on the road, the shoes on your feet.

Most of it got there by sea.

It's a fascinating industry. It's a global industry. And not really people really stop to think about it.

All the equipment in your studio there will have come on a ship at some point. The closure

wearing would have come on a ship at some point. So I think there's a little bit of sea blindness, as we call it,

as people just don't stop to think. In today's Business Daily from the BBC World Service,

with me, Ruth Alexander, we're stopping to think about it and what seafarers have to go through

to bring our goods across the oceans. They took me a show at gunpoint and I was locked up.

We'll hear how corruption can put crew members in an impossible position.

I think a lot of sea fairs are still very alone out there.

And we'll be finding out what's being done about it.

This is a 24-hour operation we're into now and it's fairly automated.

This is John Wilson giving producer Izzy Greenfield a tour of the port of Liverpool in the UK.

Yes, it's a 12 kilometre site, so John drove me around showing me the ships being loaded and unloaded.

Interesting.

When the port was developed, these cranes were put together in China, came across by sea,

just as they are, and the vessel came alongside.

It was carrying them, and it had to be at the right height, at the right moment,

and the crane was just then rolled off the ship onto the key by the Chinese.

So even the cranes in the port were brought there by sea.

Yes, astonishing.

In fact, it's estimated that 90% of traded goods travel over the oceans.

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