Reports warned in December that a 1,620-square-kilometer iceberg, which had broken off from the Antarctic Peninsula, was on its way to collide with the South Georgian island in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Scientists feared that this would crush coral, sponges and plankton on the seabed and also cut off seals and penguins from their normal hunting ground and force them to make long and dangerous detours. As it turns out, The Wall Street Journal reports, “warmer waters and the torque of the current have crushed the iceberg, known as the A68a, into a dozen pieces, which appear to be drifting further north and missing South Georgia Island.
If this is the case, the penguins and seals will be spared from the collision, and the floating icebergs could rather cause more problems for humans, possibly obstructing the shipping lanes. There are still significant risks to marine life Magazine reports. As the icebergs melt, cold fresh water will flow into the ocean, potentially killing phytoplankton and throwing the food chain off the kilter. Without phytoplankton, the krill that feed them would starve, which in turn would lead to a ‘population’ of fish, seals, penguins and whales.
A research team from the British Antarctic Survey is on its way to study the effects of the icebergs on the marine ecology of the area and get a sense of what they can expect as more icebergs amid rising global temperatures of the Antarctic ice shelf breaks down. “Everyone is stopping everything to make it happen,” Povl Abrahamsen, an oceanographer and research team leader, told the Magazine. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
More stories from theweek.com
Senator Ivanka?
The former CIA analyst who informed Biden should not be trusted after defending the torture program
Former CIA officer explains why Biden is right not to ‘run the risk’ of sending Trump intelligence