40 



in figure 26. What has been drawn as a Gulf Stream salient between 

 latitudes 45° and 46° north may be a closed whorl in the nature of 

 clockwise eddy separated from the mam stream. If it is indeed such 

 an eddy the possibihty is suggested that it was present in all three 

 maps, moving in a northeasterly direction from near the lower edge of 

 figure 25 to the middle eastern edge of figure 26 to the upper eastern 

 edge of figure 27. The observations do not extend far enough to the 

 eastward to teU. If this is such an eddy it is probably the first time 

 that one of this magnitude has been surveyed during 3 successive 

 months. The fact that the enthe area of the eddy was not investi- 

 gated makes it impossible to arrive at any accurate conclusion as to 

 the energy involved. However, it is interesting to note its persistence 

 over a period of about 2 months. Throughout the season the maps 

 indicated a possible avenue of southward transport for bergs, so that 

 the discontinuation of the Ice Patrol for the season had to be made on 

 the basis of lack of ice rather than on the basis of currents which would 

 not permit the drift of ice into the steamer lanes. 



In United States Coast Guard Bulletin No. 19, Part 2, the authors 

 of that paper briefly discussed the question of an annual cycle m the 

 strength of the Labrador Current in the Grand Banks sector in view 

 of the popular but unsupported opinion that that current experiences 

 a "spring freshet" approximately coincident in tune with the peak 

 of the iceberg season. Because of the paucity of comparable data 

 then available it could only be concluded that if such a cycle did exist 

 it was masked by the great variations from year to year. Since the 

 preparation of that report further work on this question has been done 

 and another year's observations are available. In view of the facts 

 that the variations from year to year are large and the number of 

 available data small it was reaUzed that in order to investigate the 

 annual cycle properly it would be necessary to have a succession of 

 measurements for each season considered and that random measure- 

 ments from various years could not be combined without overweighting 

 averages with the characteristics of those particular years. 



We have to discuss here some of the same sections discussed m 

 United States Coast Guard Bulletin No. 19, Part 2, in the chapter on 

 the Grand Banks sector, and for the convenience of those who wish to 

 refer to the above pubhcation we shall retain the previous section 

 designations which are: Section T, runnmg southeasterly from about 

 latitude 46°20' N., longitude 49°00' W.; section U, runnmg east and 

 west at about 45° N. ; and section W, a north and south section at the 

 Tail of the Grand Banks in about 50° W. The Labrador Current 

 passing section T may be regarded as coming entirely from more 

 northerly regions. The southerly flow past section U represents the 

 Labrador Current of section T plus the contribution of the Grand 

 Banks whorl and minus the usually small amount of Labrador Current 



