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Where have all the icebergs gone?

The British-funded Ice Patrol is usually busy in May, protecting shipping from rogue bergs. But it's all gone alarmingly quiet this year, as Michael Park discovers

Published: 21 May 2006

A mere 1,000 feet above the frigid waters of the North Atlantic the debate began in earnest. The pilot of the US Coast Guard's sturdy C130 plane believed the object which had appeared on both of the plane's radars was an iceberg. One of two young but experienced ice observers on board disagreed.

To definitively identify the target, the plane started to descend to a mettle-testing 400 feet. This was part of the mission, and what is demanded of the staff of the International Ice Patrol (IIP) by the hundreds of ships that traverse this relatively small part of the ocean and rely on its findings for their safety.

Ever since the Titanic struck what was actually one of more than 350 icebergs drifting amid the northern Atlantic shipping lanes in April, 1912, the US Coast Guard has undertaken annual iceberg patrols to help protect passenger and freight vessels that sail through the congested waters east of Canada and down the east coast of America.

"Before we started there were 113 recorded sinkings caused by icebergs," says Michael Hicks, the present Commander of the International Ice Patrol. "There have only been 19 since (omega) the Titanic sank, and all of those were vessels that chose to ignore our warnings."

In the past, in a single year, more than 2,000 icebergs have been spotted, tracked and on occasion ineffectually bombed by aircraft, in order to prevent calamitous disasters at sea. Yet in other years, including this one, few if any bergs manage to migrate south from the Arctic Circle. If the unidentified floating object below the approaching plane is in fact an iceberg, it will be the first one seen in the shipping lanes since May 2005 ­ a situation perplexing to oceanographers but emboldening to those shouting loudly about the effects of climate change.

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