Newfoundland and over the Grand Banks which bring south the huge Greenland icebergs 

 calved from the ice cap. The annual couni ol' icebergs drifting south of 48" N as established 

 by the IIP \aries enormously from nil to the thousands with the peak season being nornially 

 April to June with an average of about 200 icebergs being present at any one time. Figure 1 

 shows the distribution of the 360 known locations of the 360 incidents around North America 

 and Figure 2 shows where most of the incidents occurred off Newfoundland. Approximately 

 one third of the incidents have no exact location so could not be plotted. The density of 

 plotted collisions in the Strait of Belle Isle area is partly a retlection of the trans-Atlantic 

 traffic in and out of Quebec and partly because of descriptions like "in the Strait of Belle 

 Isle" and "off Belle Isle" permit a degree of accuracy in plotting. This is in contrast to 

 statements like "off Newfoundland" which can be used to describe incidents several hundred 

 miles offshore. 



INCIDENCE OF SHIP - ICEBERG COLLISIONS 



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Year 



Figure 3: Annual number of iceberg incidents from 1803 to 2000 with 7 year moving average 



Figure 3 illustrates the fluctuation of iceberg incidents in the North Atlantic over the years 

 1803 to present. While this may illustrate some bias in the reporting and publishing of 

 incidents it is evident that there is a significant period of collisions centered about 1885 with 

 smaller peaks of severity from the mid 1850's to mid 1860's, and again about 1913. Since 

 about 1920 there has been an average of 1 to 2 incidents per year. In Figure 4. these data are 

 compared with the historical sea ice extent off Newfoundland (Hill. 1998) and updated with 

 recent data. Seven year moving averages were used to reduce noise levels. There is no 

 accurate historic annual iceberg count prior to 1900 but there is a known general correlation 

 between sea ice extent and iceberg severity (Marko et al, 1994) and in Figure 4 the periods of 

 peak collision activity, are for most part, well matched with periods of unusually high ice 

 extents. The historical sea ice extent from 1810 to 1958 was compiled from contemporary 

 ice reports primarily from shipping newspapers and gazettes and revealed anomalously 

 severe ice years between 1 880 and 1900. The number of iceberg incidents during that time 

 does appear to confirm the severity of those years. There has been a general decrease in ice 



60 



