“The world’s largest and oldest iceberg A23a has finally come to a standstill as it appears to have run aground near the sub-Antarctic Island of South Georgia. The giant A23a, which weighs nearly a trillion tonnes, calved from Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986 and then remained grounded on the seabed in the Weddell Sea for over 30 years. The mega-iceberg, which is twice the size of Greater London, has since been drifting with the currents of the Southern Ocean towards South Georgia since 2020. Warmer waters, combined with the action of waves and tides, will lead the huge section of ice to break into smaller icebergs and eventually melt,” says the British Antarctic Survey.

“Dr Andrew Meijers, an oceanographer at British Antarctic Survey, who co-leads the OCEAN:ICE project that aims to understand how the ice sheet affects the ocean, says: ‘If the iceberg stays grounded, we don’t expect it to significantly affect the local wildlife of South Georgia. In the last few decades, the many icebergs that end up taking this route through the Southern Ocean soon break up, disperse and melt. Commercial fisheries have been disrupted in the past however, and as the berg breaks into smaller pieces, this might make fishing operations in the area both more difficult and potentially hazardous. It will be interesting to see what will happen now.  From a scientific perspective we are keen to see how the iceberg will affect the local ecosystem. Nutrients stirred up by the grounding and from its melt may boost food availability for the whole regional ecosystem, including for charismatic penguins and seals. We have several ongoing studies looking at exactly how ‘megabergs’ influence the ocean circulation, its chemistry, and the ecosystems they support.'”

So yeah, the iceberg will not collide with South Georgia. Kind of lame and disappointing.