previous years. These AES-IIP 

 joint surveys will continue in 

 the future whenever it is 

 mutually beneficial. 



Based on the second 

 pre-season deployment, the 

 1987 season opened on March 

 12 and regular aircraft de- 

 ployments started on March 

 18. From the later date until 

 August 2, 1987, an aerial 

 Iceberg Reconnaissance De- 

 tachment (ICERECDET) oper- 

 ated from Gander, Newfound- 

 land, one week out of every two. 

 The season officially closed on 

 July 31, 1987. 



Watchstanders at HP's 

 Operations Center in Groton, 

 Connecticut, analyze the ice- 

 berg sighting information from 

 the ICERECDET, along with 

 sighting information from 

 commercial shipping and AES 

 sea ice/iceberg reconnaissance 

 flights. Only those iceberg 

 sightings within MP's opera- 

 tions area {40°N - 52°N, 

 39°W - 57°W) are entered 

 into the IIP iceberg drift 

 prediction computer model 

 (ICEPLOT). The watchstanders 

 determine whether each sight- 

 ing is a resight of an iceberg 

 IIP already has on ICEPLOT, or 



whether the sighting is a 

 sighting of a new iceberg which 

 had not been previously re- 

 ported. Iceberg sightings near 

 the Newfoundland coast are not 

 entered into the computer 

 model due to lack of current 

 information in the model in 

 these areas to drift the ice- 

 bergs. Each sighting is labelled 

 in the computer model as either 

 a resight or a new sighting. 

 During the 1987 ice year, 755 

 icebergs were sighted in MP's 

 operations area (south of 

 52°N), compared to 415 

 icebergs in the 1986 ice year. 



Figure 2. Area of 

 iceberg census and 

 iceberg cour)t 

 February 7 to March 

 6, 1987. Numbers 

 shown are number of 

 icebergs per 1" lati- 

 tude by 1° longitude 

 square. 



