subjected to summer influences begin to disintegrate. Once again the 

 coastal waters are filled with growlers which drift toward the western 

 waters of Baffin Bay. In October, when the winter ice forms, the growlers 

 lodge in the new ice and drift where the winds and currents direct them. 



Currents often ground icebergs into shallow waters. When grounded 

 near shore, they may serve as anchorages for th* newly formed fast ice. 

 When carried by the currents into deep waters, the bergs continue their 

 independent course impeded slightly by the new ice. It is only when the 

 ice becomes formidable in itself, by means of its own hardness and size, 

 that a berg's drift may be appreciably affected; nevertheless, It is not 

 dominated by the drifting ice. Great pressures that force a violent 

 movement of sea ice will cause extremely hard and substantially thick ice 

 to crumble against the windward side of bergs and will create on their 

 lee side leads of considerable length. In the periods of intense cold, 

 such leads (unlike the leads that result from the separation of great 

 floes) quickly refreeze and create fairly broad lanes of smooth and flat 

 ice. 



During the period when the waters of Baffin Bay and Davis Strait are 

 covered with ice, the greatest concentration of bergs is formed in Mel- 

 ville Bay and southward along Greenland coastal waters. Fewer bergs are 

 found along Baffin Island, although here are located many of the bergs 

 discharged from Kane Basin and the glaciers of southeast Ellesmere Island, 



17 



