Every day, more than 50,000 large commercial ships travel across the world's oceans, carrying everything from food and fuel to cars and electronics. Despite crowded shipping lanes, busy ports, dense fog, and storms, collisions are surprisingly rare. That's because an invisible network of technology is constantly tracking, predicting, and coordinating the movement of vessels across the globe.

In this episode, we explore the secret system that keeps ships from colliding. We dive into marine engineering, navigation, electrical engineering, satellite technology, communications, radar systems, and maritime infrastructure to understand how ships safely share some of the busiest transportation routes on Earth.

We examine Automatic Identification Systems (AIS), marine radar, GPS navigation, electronic chart display systems (ECDIS), collision  ...