The gift of an iceberg to the ocean

The world’s current largest iceberg, which measures 1,250 square miles and weighs about 1.1 trillion tons, ran aground earlier this week in the shallows near South Georgia, a British-owned island near Antarctica, per the BBC.

Some scientists are celebrating.

“It’s like dropping a nutrient bomb into the middle of an empty desert,” commented professor Nadine Johnston from the British Antarctic Survey.

Researchers believe that within the melting ice is a treasure trove of nutrients, frozen into Antarctic ice over thousands of years, now waiting to be released. BBC called the potential benefit an “explosion of life.”

South Georgia is home to millions of Macaroni penguins. Plus, the wildlife in the oceans around the island could benefit massively over time from the disintegration of iceberg A23a.

“Without ice, we wouldn’t have these ecosystems. They are some of the most productive in the world, and support huge numbers of species and individual animals, and feed the biggest animals in the world like the blue whale,” says professor Huw Griffiths, a polar researcher stationed off the coast of Antarctica.

Death and life within the ice

A23a was born in 1986 when it broke off from an Antarctic ice shelf, per CNN. It floated north towards the Weddell Sea, where it rested for over 30 years, before beginning to follow deep-sea ocean currents again in the 2020s.

Now, off the coast of South Georgia, this visitor from the South Pole poses potential problems and blessings.

Scientists report that it is inevitable that the iceberg will break apart and melt. In fact, it has already shrunk and shed significant chunks since 1986. Those chunks can spell devastation for some local wildlife. By scraping the seafloor, the iceberg kills tiny creatures like coral and sponge; when the ice melts, it bleeds freshwater into the ocean’s saltwater, harming wildlife that thrive only in saltwater.

Further, the iceberg might spell hardship for humans who come fishing or cargo-boating through the region.

But polar scientists say that the negatives of the iceberg are natural parts of the Antarctic life-cycle.

“Where it is destroying something in one place, it’s providing nutrients and food in other places,” said Griffiths.

The iceberg also, in some respects, serves as an icy gift to the ocean."

“(The ice) isn’t just water like we drink. It’s full of nutrients and chemicals, as well as tiny animals like phytoplankton frozen inside,” said antarctic PhD researcher Laura Taylor, per BBC.

Taylor actually took samples from the iceberg as it journeyed northward from the Antarctic ice shelf. Researchers took a ship into a crack in the nearly-thousand-foot walls, where she got close enough to physically scrape the sides of the iceberg.

Climate change can cause icebergs — icebergs can treat climate change

A warming planet has spurred the creation of more and more icebergs over time. Glaciers continue to lose, rather than gain, ice, shedding hundreds of feet of water into the ocean and contributing to rising sea levels.

The World Wildlife Fund noted that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, including plane flights, industrial manufacturing, mining and more have already melted 95% of the oldest, thickest ice in the Arctic. Some scientists even predict that the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer as soon as 2040 if temperatures continue to drastically rise.

While icebergs like A23a are a natural part of the polar system, they may also serve as indicators of intensifying climate change.

On the other hand — icebergs like A23a may have a way to combat climate change themselves.

As the iceberg melts, its released elements can alter the physics and chemistry of the ocean, propelling particles from the ocean’s surface to its bottom and thereby locking some of the planet’s carbon dioxide emissions into the Earth.