00:00You're lazing around on the deck of the ship when you see something whitish-gray covering the horizon.
00:06Like in a horror movie or your worst nightmare, this weird fog is nearing the vessel.
00:11It's infinite. You can't see where it starts or where it ends.
00:15Soon it makes the ship look like a grain of sand in a vast desert.
00:19That's when the realization hits.
00:22It's an iceberg, and your ship is likely going to repeat the Titanic's fate.
00:26Now, all this is a very likely scenario, since the world's biggest iceberg, A23A, is on the move again after months of spinning in a huge, wider vortex.
00:37And it's actually the second time in just a couple of years that this massive chunk of ice has broken free.
00:43The first time was in 2023, when the berg went wandering around after being stuck on the seafloor for a staggering 37 years.
00:51The thing is huge, about three times the size of New York City.
00:55It also weighs nearly a trillion tons.
00:58The giant chunk of ice first broke off from Antarctica's Filzner Ice Shelf back in 1986.
01:05But instead of floating away, it got grounded on the seafloor just a few miles from where it started.
01:10Because of that, it melted much more slowly than most icebergs.
01:14In December 2023, A23A finally broke free and started to drift away from Antarctica.
01:21But it didn't get far before getting stuck again.
01:24This time near the South Orkney Islands.
01:27It got trapped in something called a Taylor Column.
01:30That's a huge spinning water current that forms when ocean currents swirl around an underwater mountain.
01:36At one point, A23A was rotating around 15 degrees counterclockwise every day.
01:42Luckily, as of December 2024, the iceberg escaped the Taylor Column and is now slowly moving again.
01:50Researchers are super curious to see if it'll follow the same path as other giant icebergs that have broken off from Antarctica,
01:57or if it'll find its own unique way.
02:01Such enormous icebergs, such as A23A, release nutrients into the water as they melt.
02:07And it can actually create hot spots of life in parts of the ocean that are usually pretty empty.
02:12But there's still a lot we don't understand about how the size, shape, or origin of the iceberg might affect that process.
02:20So, to figure it out, scientists have been collecting water samples from the areas A23A is expected to pass through.
02:28And they'll keep collecting samples as it drifts along.
02:31Hopefully, it'll give us a better idea of how massive icebergs like this one influence the ocean around them.
02:38By the way, the glacier our monster of an iceberg was once part of could be very, very old, literally ancient.
02:46In Antarctica, the oldest glacier ice might be close to 1 million years old.
02:51Over in Greenland, the oldest glacier ice is more than 100,000 years old.
02:55And in Alaska, the oldest glacier ice ever recovered, found in a basin between Mount Bona and Mount Churchill,
03:02is only about 30,000 years old.
03:05A mere child.
03:06At the same time, in a typical Alaskan Valley glacier,
03:10it only takes about 100 years for newly formed ice to travel through the entire length of the glacier.
03:15For something like Bering Glacier, which is Alaska's largest and stretches over 140 miles,
03:21the ice can move through the whole thing in less than 400 years.
03:25And that's a lot of movement for such a massive glacier.
03:28Now, let's move on to Iceberg Alley, a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean that runs from the Arctic to Newfoundland.
03:35If you want to see as many icebergs as you can, that's the place to be.
03:39Tons of icebergs float through this place every year.
03:43Most of them come from Greenland.
03:45In spring and summer, big chunks of glaciers break off
03:48and get carried by north-south currents through Baffin Bay into the Labrador Sea, where they eventually melt.
03:55Some icebergs also come from Canada's shoreline,
03:58traveling through the Davis Strait and into the Labrador Sea,
04:01before drifting along Newfoundland's eastern and western coasts.
04:05These massive ice chunks are really old, too, about 10,000 years.
04:10Every year, about 400 to 800 medium and large icebergs pass through Iceberg Alley.
04:15How fast they drift depends on their size, shape, currents, waves, and wind,
04:21but the average speed is less than a half mile per hour.
04:25Now, there are six types of icebergs that make their way through Iceberg Alley.
04:30Tabular icebergs are flat slabs of ice, much wider than they are tall.
04:35Blocky icebergs have steep sides and sharp angles, like cut-off pyramids.
04:40Wedged icebergs have one steep side and one sloping side.
04:43Dome icebergs have a rounded top.
04:46Pinnacle icebergs have one or more steep peaks sticking up.
04:50And dry dock icebergs are U-shaped, with a hollowed-out section.
04:54They all look incredible.
04:56Comment below which is your favorite type.
05:00Anyway, as these icebergs drift south,
05:02the warmer water speeds up their melting,
05:05making them pretty unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous.
05:08Nowadays, satellites help track medium and large icebergs to prevent accidents.
05:13But smaller icebergs can still be risky for small boats.
05:17One iceberg made headlines in 2018 when it got unusually close to the Newfoundland village of Ferryland.
05:24Pictures of the giant iceberg towering over the village's houses went viral.
05:29It got stuck in the 330-foot deep water, which turned out to be too shallow for its massive size.
05:35And now, I'll take you on an unusual journey to the past
05:39to witness the birth of something beautiful and equally disastrous.
05:43Its very existence led to one of the greatest tragedies in history.
05:47Watch!
05:48An enormous chunk of ice is breaking off a glacier in southwest Greenland.
05:52It's made of snow that fell over 100,000 years ago,
05:55when mammoths were still wandering around the planet.
05:59The enormous iceberg starts its long journey.
06:01It stretches more than 1,700 feet in length and weighs 75 million tons.
06:07Despite its size, it's pretty peaceful.
06:10It stays far away from ships and the busy transport routes near where it was born.
06:15But then, it starts floating south, much farther than most icebergs ever get.
06:21Usually, icebergs like this melt way before they reach such warm waters.
06:25Out of the 15,000 to 30,000 icebergs that drift away from Greenland's glaciers every year,
06:32only about 1% make it all the way to the Atlantic.
06:35So, the fact that this iceberg keeps going
06:38and reaches over 5,000 miles south of the Arctic Circle by April makes it truly unique.
06:44Even after months of melting, this block of ice is still incredibly massive.
06:49It weighs around 1.5 million tons, which is almost twice as much as the Golden Gate Bridge.
06:56Above the water, its visible parts tower more than 100 feet high.
07:01But like most icebergs, the majority of it, about 90%, is hidden below the surface.
07:06The icebergs' story takes a tragic turn on April 14, 1912, when, guess what?
07:14Yep, it comes across the ocean liner Titanic.
07:18The ship is about 370 miles from Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean
07:22when the iceberg seems to appear out of nowhere.
07:25The crew doesn't spot it until just minutes before the crash.
07:29Why don't they see it sooner?
07:31That's a good question.
07:32Now, most people imagine icebergs as tall, bright, white chunks of ice,
07:37maybe even covered with snow.
07:39But in reality, icebergs come in all sorts of colors.
07:43Some are striped, patterned, or even have candy-like swirls.
07:47And they can also be black.
07:49There are two ways an iceberg can turn black.
07:52When the ice is extremely pure, with no bubbles or cracks,
07:55then it absorbs all the light instead of reflecting it, making it look black.
08:00Or a volcanic eruption can cover a glacier in ash.
08:04If ice from that glacier breaks off, it can have a dark or black color.
08:09Scientists still aren't sure why the Titanic's iceberg looked dark.
08:13Or even if it really did.
08:15But one sailor who was on the lookout in the crow's nest said it seemed black.
08:20Another described it as gray or dark gray.
08:23One theory is this iceberg could have been a blackbird,
08:26which forms when the top part melts, causing the iceberg to roll over.
08:31If the bottom is smooth enough to absorb light, it looks dark.
08:35But even if the iceberg wasn't truly black,
08:38nighttime could have made it much harder to spot.
08:41Icebergs don't reflect much light, especially if they're jagged or vertical.
08:46They end up blending into the dark, shimmering ocean.
08:49Without radar, icebergs at night are incredibly hard to see,
08:54which is probably why the Titanic's crew didn't notice it in time.
Comments