The U.S. is served by publicly - and privately-owned marine facilities located in approximately 360 commercial sea and river ports. These are found along the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf and Great Lakes coasts, as well as in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

As ports struggle to cope with a global oil glut, huge queues of supertankers have formed in some of the world's busiest sea lanes, where some 200 million barrels of crude lies waiting to be loaded or delivered.

Last week, the Rolls-Royce led Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative (AAWA) project presented its first findings at a conference in Helsinki, expressing high hopes for vessel automation in commercial service -- and predicting that it will arrive soon.

The American Association of Port Authorities suggested that its member ports intend to spend over $150bn in combined infrastructure investments by 2020 - contrasted with a "best-case" government investment in port-related freight infrastructure of only $25bn over the same period.

Shipping consultants Drewry have released their container shipping review for the first quarter 2016, and the outlook does not look positive.

Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 has come into force in English law. The U.K. government has issued a practical guide on the section saying the measure is designed to create a level playing field between those businesses, whose turnover is over a certain threshold, which act responsibly and those that need to change their policies and practices.

Overall confidence levels in the ocean shipping industry fell to a record low in the three months ending February 2016, according to a survey by shipping advisory firm Moore Stephens.