World's Largest Iceberg On Collision Course With South Georgia's Penguins
World's Largest Iceberg On Collision Course With South Georgia's Penguins. The world’s largest iceberg is on a collision course with penguins in the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia. Images of the A23a iceberg taken from an RAF Atlas A400M aircraft as it flew a routine operation over the South Atlantic show the iceberg looming towards the geologically important island. Experts fear it could ground and shatter upon impact, endangering the island's unique wildlife, including colonies of king penguins and millions of elephant and fur seals. South Georgia’s icy shores have faced such threats before. In 2004, the massive iceberg A38 grounded on the island’s continental shelf, blocking access to feeding grounds and leaving countless penguin chicks and seal pups to perish. The iceberg A23a, which originally calved from Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986, became trapped on the seafloor and ensnared in an ocean vortex for decades. It finally broke free in December 2024, embarking on what experts describe as its “final journey” into warmer waters north of Antarctica. Satellite imagery reveals the iceberg is steadily shrinking, its towering cliffs—once rising 1,312ft (400m), taller than London’s Shard—are melting and disintegrating. Once covering an area of 3,900 sq km, it has reduced to 3,500 sq km, roughly the size of Cornwall. A23a could splinter into massive fragments at any moment. These floating cities of ice could linger for years, unpredictably drifting around South Georgia and posing ongoing risks to the island's wildlife.
