Iceberg splits in two
2003-11-04 07:12
Auckland - The world's largest iceberg has split in two after being pummelled by a powerful storm, the Antarctic Sun newspaper reported.
B15, an 11 000-square-kilometre monster the size of Jamaica, was one of the biggest icebergs ever seen until it broke up last month, said the weekly paper.
The title of world's largest iceberg now passes to C19A, near a French Antarctic base, which at 5 659 square kilometres is about the size of Brunei.
B15 has been blamed for the deaths of millions of penguins since it broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000, blocking their access to the sea.
Last Friday US researchers planted a weather and global positioning tower on the newly formed B15A so that it could be more closely tracked, the Antarctic Sun said.
Penguin researcher Gerald Kooyman of Scripps Institution of Oceanography told the newspaper that nearly 75% of the emperor penguins previously counted at Cape Crozier on Ross Island are no longer around.
- AFP