Why do some big successful brands go bust?

Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.

I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.

They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.

And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to

owners and employees to ask, what can we learn? It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just

couldn't survive. Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service with me Ruth Alexander.

This is the program all about numbers and statistics in the news and in the world all around us.

And this week, in the oceans.

One of our listeners, Philip Bignol, is written to us with a question about the high seas.

There has been quite a lot of press in recent weeks about people traffickers and a swimmer in the English Channel, the Straits of Dover.

There's usually the additional comment that it's the

busiest shipping channel in the world. Well, is it? Whenever I've used the channel ferries,

there seems to be no difficulty to get through to the other side. We're going to answer this

question and uncover lots more about busy shipping lanes this week.

Shipping lanes are usually routes in the sea or in large lakes that are regularly used by

vessels. The English Channel is the body of water between southern England and northern France.

It links the North Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. To start off, we thought we'd look at how

ships are detected and counted. One way of

counting ships is to use something called AIS, an automatic identification system. It lets you see

what vessels are in the vicinity. It's mainly used as a navigation safety system and works really

well for areas like the English Channel.

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