The Canadian Ice Service, Environment Canada, is currently developing an op
erational iceberg forecasting model; the present work forms part of that ef
fort. While existing models predict iceberg drift and deterioration, the ne
w model will account for calving that produces smaller ice pieces and subse
quently track the drift and melt of the calved pieces. Bergy bits and growl
ers, which we consider here to be ice pieces in the size range from 3 to 20
m, can cause large forces upon impact with offshore structures. The probab
ility of encountering these bergy bits and growlers is of significant inter
est to marine transportation and offshore resource development. Calving due
to wave-induced erosion at the waterline of a floating iceberg can produce
many thousands of small ice pieces having a wide distribution of sizes. Th
ese small ice pieces then melt as individual entities and eventually disapp
ear. Since the calving events occur periodically, there is a continual supp
ly of small ice pieces in the neighborhood of the parent iceberg. The focus
of the present paper is on the evolution of the size-frequency distributio
n function for the calved ice pieces. It makes use of the initial distribut
ion function following the calving event discussed by Savage et al. (2000).
Dimensional analysis, laboratory tests, and field observations are applied
to obtain simple correlations and devise a melt law for the smaller ice pi
eces. This melt law is then used to determine the temporal evolution of the
small ice piece size-frequency distribution function.