The icing on the cake

SCIENTISTS FROM UK RESEARCH SHIP SAMPLE WORLD'S LARGEST ICEBERG

Members of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), on board the UK's polar research ship RRS Sir David Attenborough, recently came face to face with the world's biggest iceberg (A23a), which they confirmed via satellite imagery, is currently on the move - literally breaking into new frontiers!

Covering an area of 1,500 square miles and 400m tall with most of its ice below the waterline, A23a has until this year been stuck fast to the sea floor since breaking off from the Antarctic coast in 1986. However, it's thought that a combination of ocean currents and winds have sent it across the Weddell Sea.

The Sir David Attenborough encountered it on Friday 1st December 2023 about 56miles northeast of Joinville Island, at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula with it now heading into the Southern Ocean. The ship was en route to begin its 10 day Biopole mission, investigating how Antarctic ecosystems and sea ice drive global ocean cycles of carbon and nutrients to better understand how climate change is affecting the Southern Ocean and all its' inhabitants, from tiny organisms to penguins and whales - and their roles in regulating our climate. Sampling A23a gave them one such opportunity!

The British Antarctic Survey have been gathering scientific evidence about our changing planet and working in the extremes of Antarctica and the Arctic for over 60 years. "Our planet's frozen regions are changing in ways that impact the entire planet, and at a rate and scale we haven't seen before. We're working to understand why, what this means for the inhabitants of Earth, and what we can do about it."

Laura Taylor, a bio-geochemist working on the BIOPOLE cruise, explained the significance of samples of seawater they took around A23a:

"We know that these giant icebergs can provide nutrients to the waters they pass through, creating thriving ecosystems in otherwise less productive areas. What we don't know is what difference particular icebergs, their scale, and their origins can make to that process. We took samples of ocean surface waters behind, immediately adjacent to, and ahead of the iceberg's route. They should help us determine what life could form around A23a, and how this iceberg and others like it impact carbon in the ocean and its balance with the atmosphere."

You can watch footage of the incredible iceberg shot via a drone by expedition team members below:-

Photo credits: Edge of A23a, 1 December 2023 (Theresa Gossman, Matthew Gascoyne, Christopher Grey, ,BAS) Orca in front of A23a (Liam O'Brien, BAS)