If you’ve seen “Titanic,” you know the famous line, “Iceberg, straight ahead!” Well, maybe in colder northern waters that would be quite the sighting. Unfortunately, it looks as though the famous A68A iceberg that has been roaming Atlantic ocean waters for three and half years, has been traveling further and further south, and its joy ride is coming to an end. The massive iceberg is melting fast, dropping billions of tons of fresh water near a fragile marine ecosystem off South Georgia.
First broke off Antartica in 2017 it was the 6th biggest iceberg in recorded history. Then in December 2020 it got dangerously close to South Georgia island, and people feared it would crash to shore, causing untold damage to sea life, but instead., the waters that had warmed by several degrees over recent years due to climate change started melting the icy beast at an incredibly fast pace.
The iceberg dropped 152 Billion tons of fresh water into the area. To put that into perspective, that’s about 61 million swimming pools. Yikes. Environmentalists hopes of averting an iceberg disaster were short lived, because that massive influx of fresh water into the island ecosystem will no doubt have an effect on all the creatures and plant life that depend on their waters being salty, not fresh. Scientists are currently keeping an eye on the evolving situation.
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