The World’s Biggest Iceberg Is Threatening a Wildlife Haven

In a seemingly reverse Titanic reenactment, the world’s largest iceberg is heading straight for a remote British territory—one teeming with sensitive wildlife.

The colossal iceberg A23a is on a collision path with the island of South Georgia, a British overseas territory between Antarctica and Argentina in the South Atlantic Ocean. The big berg is currently drifting just 173 miles (280 kilometers) from the island, and its path poses a potential threat to local wildlife like penguins and seals, as originally reported by BBC News.

“Icebergs are inherently dangerous. I would be extraordinarily happy if it just completely missed us,” said sea captain Simon Wallace, who’s on the South Georgia government vessel Pharos, according to BBC News.

The iceberg’s journey began nearly four decades ago, when natural processes caused it to break off West Antarctica’s Filchner-Ronne ice shelf. Its newfound freedom didn’t last, however, as the iceberg soon became stuck to the seafloor. In 2020, it finally broke free and began floating in the Weddell Sea once more, only to face yet another obstacle worthy of Homer’s Odyssey: it got trapped in a water vortex. Its subsequent great escape made headlines late last year, as we previously reported.

A23a isn’t just big, it’s “ENORMOUS,” Andrew Miller, the primary photographer for Toronto’s Capture North Studios, wrote in a blog post on December 10. Miller captured remarkable drone footage of A23a, including the feature image of this article, while working on an expedition with Intrepid Travel.

As of August, the iceberg covered an area spanning 1,418 square miles (3,672 square kilometers), though now the warmer waters further north from Antarctica are slowly melting its 1,312-foot (400-meter) cliffs, according to the BBC. The iceberg is now “just” around the size of England’s Cornwall.

A23a is not the first giant iceberg to head toward the British island and threaten the local wildlife. In 2020, iceberg A68a also made a run for the landmass, but ultimately lost steam just southeast of the island before breaking apart and disintegrating into thousands of pieces. Had A68a become stuck on the seafloor near South Georgia, it would have disrupted crucial penguin and seal feeding routes. Such is the concern now as A23a heads toward the ecologically sensitive island.

“The iceberg [A23a] is following a very similar path [to previous large icebergs] and we’ll be interested to see if it also gets caught in the same place as the previous bergs, which span in circles for several weeks before moving on,” Andrew Fleming, Head of Mapping and GIS at British Antarctic Survey (BAS), said in a BAS statement from mid-January. BAS researchers are tracking A23a’s path with satellite images.

It remains to be seen if A23a will stick to its course, how the wildlife will fare whatever the outcome, and how the icy behemoth’s decades-long journey will end.