Protective skirt for an iceberg

A protective skirt for a tabular iceberg, the skirt comprising:

• a string of floating posts;
• an upper protective portion in the form of panels suspended in a vertical plane between adjacent pairs of the floating posts;
• a lower protective portion suspended below the floating posts;
• and
• at least one auxiliary float;
• at least one of the floating posts including panel-manipulating means for drawing in at least one of the panels suspended therefrom, whereby the length of the string of floating posts may be shortened by shortening the length of at least one of the spans between floating posts;
• the lower protective portion being attached to the floating posts in such a way that it is supported by the floating posts for each span of the string of floating posts that is not capable of being shortened by panel-manipulation means;
• the lower protective portion including a vertically extending division associated with each floating post that includes panel-manipulating means, with one edge of the division being supported by one of the floating posts and the other edge of the division being supported by a corresponding auxiliary float, the length of the or each span of the lower protective portion having one end supported by the auxiliary float being such that the edges of the division overlap and the degree of overlap is adjustable by moving the position of the auxiliary float relative to the string of floating posts in order to accomodate shortenings of the length of the string of floats.