A mere thousand feet above the frigid waters of the North Atlantic the debate began in earnest. The pilot of the U.S. Coast Guard's sturdy C130 plane believed the object which had appeared on both of the plane's radars was an iceberg. One of two young but experienced ice observers onboard disagreed.
To definitively identify the target, the plane started to descend to a harrowing 400 feet. This is what hundreds of ships that traverse this relatively small part of the ocean continually demand of the staff of the International Ice Patrol.
Ever since the Titanic struck what was actually one of more than 350 icebergs drifting amidst the northern Atlantic shipping lanes in April of 1912, the Coast Guard has undertaken annual iceberg patrols to help protect passenger and freight vessels that sail through the congested waters east of Canada and down the east coast of the United States.
International Ice Patrol
"Before we started there were 113 recorded sinkings caused by icebergs," said Michael Hicks, commander of the International Ice Patrol. "There have only been 19 since the Titanic sank, and all of those were vessels that chose to ignore our warnings."
In the past, in a single year, more than 2,000 icebergs have been spotted, tracked and on occasion ineffectually bombed by aircraft, in order to prevent disasters at sea. Yet in other years, including 2006, few if any bergs manage to migrate south from the Arctic Circle. If the unidentified floating object below the plane on patrol last year was in fact an iceberg, it would have been the first one seen in many months, a situation perplexing to oceanographers but emboldening to those shouting loudly about the effects of climate change.
"I've been trying to understand the variability for years," said Don Murphy, the Ice Patrol's veteran oceanographer. "And every year that goes by I get another year of experience and realize how little we really know."
MANY UNKNOWNS
After a century of study, there are still many unknowns regarding the movement of icebergs and the reasons for the wide variability in the number that mischievously make it into the 300-mile-long and 60-mile-wide area of the North Atlantic known as "Iceberg Alley." What is certain is those that do make it this far south are nearing the end of a three-year journey and their existence.
"When the bergs get this far south, their days are numbered," Hicks said, explaining that the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream cause all icebergs to ultimately melt, ensuring one less threat to ships and one less iceberg for the patrol to monitor. What formed from 1,000-year-old ice atop the majestic ice cap in Greenland ends up becoming an indistinguishable part of the ocean and a sterile statistic in the Coast Guard's table of meddlesome bergs.
International Ice PatrolIce must be longer than 45 feet at the waterline to be considered an iceberg. This shape is known as tabular ice.
The International Ice Patrol is a unique organization. A division of Coast Guard, it is the only world body – funded by 17 countries – that constantly monitors icebergs that stray into the Atlantic shipping lanes parallel to and south of Newfoundland. While the Canadian Ice Service is dedicated to monitoring sea ice and icebergs in Canadian waters, and the Danish Meteorological Service is concerned with bergs around its territory of Greenland, the International Ice Patrol has, since its inception in 1912, been charged with alerting cross-Atlantic traffic to any iceberg threats.
"Almost immediately after the Titanic sank, the U.S. Navy assigned two cruisers to the Grand Banks to patrol for icebergs," Hicks said. "The following year, the U.S. Navy could no longer spare the ships to do that, so the Revenue Cutter Service, which was the predecessor to the U.S. Coast Guard, stepped up. The U.K. actually asked the U.S. Government, since we had started doing this, to continue and, with the exception of the World War years, we have been doing it ever since."
