World's Biggest Iceberg Begins Moving after
Blocking Penguins Food Supplies
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by Associated Press April 4, 2005
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The world's biggest iceberg has begun moving again, nearly three
months after it ran aground, threatening penguin breeding colonies
and blocking ships supplying food and fuel to Antarctic research
stations, officials said Monday.
The giant iceberg, known as
B15A, is now moving slowly out of McMurdo Sound, where it had
blocked sea access, said Lou Sanson, chief executive of the
government scientific agency Antarctica New Zealand.
The
U.S. McMurdo Station and New Zealand's Scott Base are located on the
sound, and Italy's Terra Nova base is nearby.
The
160-kilometer (100-mile) -long iceberg, which contains enough water
to supply the River Nile for 80 years, had blocked wind and water
currents in the sound, causing a buildup of ice which impeded ships
needed to supply food and fuel to the three research stations.
Two icebreakers managed to smash a 50-kilometer (30-mile)
track through the ice to McMurdo Pier, enabling ships to deliver
supplies.
The McMurdo station has a staff of about 1,000
during the summer and about 100 remain for the harsh polar winter.
Scott Base has about 100 staff during the summer and only about 12
in the winter.
The ice blockage also threatened penguin
breeding colonies, with tens of thousands of Adele penguin chicks
facing starvation as parent birds were forced to trudge up to 180
kilometers (110 miles) to open sea to gather food.
Scientists are still trying to confirm how many of the
chicks starved over the summer.
Before B15A come to a halt
in January, scientists had feared it would slam into a 70-kilometer
(40-mile) -long glacier near the McMurdo station.
Sanson
said the iceberg is now nearing the glacier, known as the Drygalski
Ice Tongue, at a speed of about one kilometer (5/8 mile) a day, but
a direct hit seemed unlikely.
"It still hasn't cleared (out
of the area), but it's moving in the right direction," he said.
But he added: "We know very little about what makes this
thing tick. Every time someone has made a prediction about it,
they've been proved wrong."
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Source: Associated Press
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