Friday, March 9, 2012

Icebergs Ahead!

Icebergs are living things.  They don't just sit inertly in the water waiting for the Titantic.  They are constantly being eroded by water below the surface and wind, rain and snow above the surface.  This means that its size and geometry is constantlty changing.  At some point, the center of gravity moves enough that the iceberg rolls and shoots up out of the water.  That is why is it is not such a good idea to tie your boat to one longer than necessary to obtain your glacier ice for the evening drinks.

Don't believe me?  Here are 2 photographs taken 20 seconds apart.  We were returning to the boat in the Zodiac when we started to see movement next to our anchored boat.  In the 20 seconds between these 2 exposures the iceberg rose 10 feet out of the water and dropped a 200 pound chunck of ice (see upper right of second image) near our boat.  Our captain was on the boat to conduct the panic.



These things are awesome.  We could watch them all day and night.  I will select a few of the more interesting icebergs for the next entry.

1 comment:

  1. That is just downright dangerous stuff. We've seen on TV the large pieces calving off well known large glaciers, but this is wild.

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