Abstract: Sea ice, which is defined as any form of ice that forms as a result of seawater freezing. Various types of sea ice can be found in ice-covered regions. Ice floe, which is the flat pieces of sea ice, can range from meters to kilometers in size. The floe size distribution is a basic parameter of sea ice that affects the behavior of sea-ice extent, both dynamically and thermodynamically. The sea ice features were collected using an unmanned aerial vehicle and several image processing algorithms have been applied to samples of sea-ice images to extract useful information about sea ice. The sea ice statistics were used to calculate climate and wave and structure of ice. The calculation of sea ice statistics seems to be challenging due to difficulties in ice floe identification, particularly the separation of seemingly connected ice floes. To solve this. Problem the gradient vector flow (GVF) snake algorithm is applied. To evolve the GVF snake algorithm automatically, an initialization based on the distance transform is proposed to detect individual ice floes, and the morphological cleaning is afterward applied to smoothen the shape of each identified ice floe. Based on the identification result, the image is separated into four different layers: ice floes, brash pieces, slush, and water. This makes it further possible to present a color map of the ice floes and brash pieces based on sizes, and the corresponding ice floe size distribution histogram. The proposed algorithm yields an acceptable identification result. Sea ice statistics helps in providing an early warning of an ice compaction event, which can be dangerous if the ice-structure interaction mode changes from a “slurry flow” type to a “pressured ice” type.

Keywords: Ice floe, GVF snake algorithm, brash pieces, slush, and water.