Pack Ice Traps Boats After Seal Hunt
Canadian Coast Guard Drops Supplies for 400 on Board

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 20, 2007; Page A24

TORONTO, April 19 -- More than 100 fishing boats struggling to return
from the annual seal hunt with about 400 people aboard were trapped in
shifting pack ice off Newfoundland, helpless as an Arctic wind
squeezes the ice tight around their vessels, the Canadian Coast Guard
said Thursday.

The moving pack ice, long the nemesis of explorers and sailors in the
frozen north, was so thick it trapped two of five icebreakers sent to
the scene, according to coast guard communications officer Susan
Keough in St. John's, Newfoundland. One was freed Thursday; the other
remained icebound.

( Moral of the story: Don't take yer fishing boat into Pack Ice
looking for Seals . . .)