The largest and largest iceberg in the world, with a size twice than the Metropolitan Zone of London, has enchanted in shallow waters near the British island of San Pedro or Georgia del Sur, which has unleashed the fear that it can alter the millions of penguins and seals that inhabit that area.
In a statement issued by the British Antarctic Survey organization, the oceanographer Andrew Meijers, which collides the project to try to understand how the ice layers affect the ocean, points out that if the Megaiceberg “continues stagnant, it is not expected to significantly affect the local wild life of Georgia del Sur”.
“In recent decades, the many icebergs that end up adopting this route through the Antarctic Ocean will soon break, disperse and melt,” he said.
He also observed that “it will be interesting to see what happens now (…) and if the iceberg affects the local ecosystem,” as some fear.
The Iceberg A23A has 400 meters thick ice plates, weighs almost one billion tons and its surface covers about 3,600 square kilometers.
Fishermen who operate for these waters are afraid that this incident can force them to battle with huge pieces of ice and this ends up affecting the ability to feed the penguins in the area.
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The world’s largest iceberg runs into shallow waters near Georgia del Sur
Antarctica scientists argue that there are huge amounts of nutrients contained in the ice and that, by melting, this would generate an explosion of life in the ocean.
In this sense, according to Professor Nadine Johnston, of the aforementioned British Center, it would be “how to throw a nutrient pump in the middle of an empty desert.”
The ecologist Mark Belchier, who advises the island’s government, points to the BBC that if the iceberg breaks “the resulting icebergs will probably present a risk to the boats since they move in the direction of local currents and could restrict the access of ships to local fishing ground”.
This is the last episode in the trajectory that follows the A23a in 40 years, after detaching in 1986 of the Antarctic Ice Platform Filchner, when it broke into three smaller pieces, the A23a being one of them.
Since then, experts have followed the track and observed that for months he was caught in the Taylor column, an oceanographic phenomenon where the water in rotation retains the objects on their surface, which kept the A23A turning on a point and delaying at the same time its anticipated trip to the north.
Last December, the iceberg broke after remaining stranded for more than three decades and was floating to the Antarctic Ocean, according to satellite images.
In statements made today to the aforementioned channel by Professor Huw Griffiths from a polar research vessel by Sir David Atenborough, currently located in Antarctica, he observed that “the future of all icebergs is that everyone will die.” “It is very surprising to see that the A23A has lasted so long and has only lost a quarter of its area.”
With EFE information.
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