History

The first observations of icebergs were probably made by Inuit hunters in the Arctic and then by early mariners, including Irish monks and Vikings. Martin Frobisher’s expeditions to Baffin Island in the 1570s to 1580s certainly witnessed them and whalers and sealers in Baffin Bay and the Greenland Sea frequently sheltered in their lee from storms and sea ice. Documentation of icebergs in the northwest Atlantic began in 1914 by the International Ice Patrol after the loss of the RMS Titanic, and over 1,500 lives, due to a collision with an iceberg in April 1912. The First International Conference for the Safety of Life at Sea established the Ice Patrol, operated by the US Coast Guard, in 1913. It conducts surveys of the icebergs that drift south of 48° N off Newfoundland. Initially this was from cutters, and then airborne reconnaissance flights started in 1946 using first visual observations; airborne radar studies began in 1957 and in 1983 Side-Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR) was deployed. After 1991 (1995) radar remote sensing made use of data from ERS-1 (ERS-2), and RADARSAT’s synthetic aperture radar (SAR), beginning in 1995. A major concern is the hazard to drilling platforms off the coast of Newfoundland.