In December, reports warned that a 1,620 square mile iceberg that had broken off the Antarctic Peninsula was on its way to collide with South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Doing this, scientists feared, would crush coral, sponges and plankton on the sea floor and also cut off seals and penguins from their normal hunting grounds, forcing them to make long and dangerous detours. As it turns out, The Wall Street Journal reports that “warmer waters and the torque of the current have shattered the iceberg known as A68a” into a dozen pieces that look like they will drift further north and miss South Georgia Island.
If so, the penguins and seals will be spared the collision and the floating icebergs could instead cause more problems for humans, potentially hindering shipping lanes. Still, there are significant risks to marine life, the log reports. As the icebergs melt, there would be an influx of cold fresh water into the ocean, potentially killing phytoplankton and turning the food chain upside down. Without phytoplankton, the krill that feeds on it would starve, which in turn would lead to “population depletion” of fish, seals, penguins and whales.
A research team from the British Antarctic Survey is on the way to study the effects of the icebergs on the marine ecology of the area and get a sense of what to expect if more icebergs break off the Antarctic ice shelf with rising global temperatures. “Everyone is pulling out all the stops to make this happen,” said Povl Abrahamsen, an oceanographer and leader of the research team. log. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
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