Shipping, the ocean transportation of people and goods, moves most world trade, and understanding its effects is required to assess human use of the oceans. This work examines the shipping trade by combining global observations of ship location with vessel identification records, and interpreting the results in an ecological context. By incorporating quality checking methods with volunteered geographic information, I provide a spatially resolved high resolution dataset which links individual ships with their movement patterns and vessel attributes. This contributes knowledge on the state and distribution of shipping, and identifies areas where mitigation of impacts are achievable.