third week in April all field ice in the Grand Banks area south of 49° N. 

 had disappeared. This represented a departure in time from mean con- 

 ditions of nearly 1 month. Normally April finds slush still present south 

 and west of Cape Race and along the slope of the Grand Banks as far 

 south as the 44th parallel. May was extremely anomalous, there being 

 no sea ice in the area during the entire month, whereas normally slush 

 extends as far south as the 47th parallel with patches as far east as the 

 47th meridian. 



The only known marine casualty which resulted from ice during the 

 1948 season was the Danish steamer Nevada, which struck an iceberg on 

 the morning of 6 June, 21 miles east of Baccalieu Island. The Nevada 

 was bound from Wabana, Bell Island, Newfoundland, to Europe. Dam- 

 ages to the bow of the Nevada were estimated at approximately $35,000, 

 with no personnel casualties. The Nevada was able to make port at St. 

 Johns, Newfoundland, unassisted. 



ICEBERG CENSUS OF BAFFIN BAY 



One of the services, which the governments party to the International 

 Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea have undertaken to provide is 

 for the study and observation of ice conditions in the North Atlantic. 

 Most of the answers to the questions involving the presence, quantity, 

 distribution, and behavior of ice in the vicinity of the Grand Banks of 

 Newfoundland involve conditions "upstream" from that area all the 

 way to the ice))erg source regions in Greenland. In the absence of definite 

 knowledge, assumptions must be made until the facts are known. One 

 set of such facts not yet known but pertinent to many of the problems 

 farther south, deal with the usual period of travel of a berg from its parent 

 glacier to the Cirand Banks, and the conditions of that travel which result 

 in such great mortality, conservatively estimated at more than 80 percent. 



It is known that while glacier activity is greater in summer than in 

 winter, there is an even more marked seasonal variation in the release of 

 bergs from the gla(!ier fjords. This, coupled with occasional reports of 

 large conc^c^ntrations of bergs encountered by mariners in Baffin Bay, 

 suggests the possibility that different year-classes of bergs may be iden- 

 tified by such concentrations and that the length of the usual travel time 

 may be inferred from the number of concentrations. Thus an ice census 

 of Baffin Bay taken on each of at least three successive years might give 

 positive information regarding the length of the period of travel time 

 usually required foi- a berg to complete the journey from its glacier fjord 

 to the Cirand Banks, as well as yielding quantitative information on the 

 mortality rate. A beginning was made in the summer of 1940 when the 

 cutter Northland took such a census. Unfortunately the war interfered 

 with the continuation of this series and it was not until 1948 that avail- 

 able facilities made it feasible to begin a new series. The 1948 iceberg 

 census of Baffin Bay was carried out by one of the PBIG aircraft regularly 

 assigned to International Ice Patrol during the 1948 season. The plane 



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