Iceberg in SA? 'Impossible'

2007-10-09 08:00

Tisha Steyn

St Francis Bay - Snow on the Karoo mountains in spring and now a massive iceberg 35 nautical miles (about 65km) off the Eastern Cape coast.

Strange, but these two unusual weather phenomena are being experienced in South Africa.

National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) spokesperson Craig Lambinon said on Monday night: "An iceberg has been spotted by a vessel called the Ntini late on Monday afternoon about 35 nautical miles southeast of St Francis Bay."

According to Lambinon the iceberg was about 25m in length and 20m high.

Lambinon told Sapa that maritime authorities were taking the report "quite seriously" and the maritime radio services were broadcasting a warning to vessels in the area.

"The NSRI and the Maritime Rescue Co-ordinating Centre (MRCC) in Cape Town are monitoring the movement of the iceberg."

Lambinon said the NSRI would probably send out a crew on Tuesday morning to take a closer look at the iceberg and try to determine where it was coming from, and where it was headed.

Benny Jenni of the MRCC confirmed that the fishing vessel Ntini had seen the iceberg at 14:45 on Monday.

Double-checked

Lambinon said the Ntini crew turned around and double-checked to make sure their eyes were not deceiving them.

Jenni said the iceberg was moving in a south-westerly direction towards St Francis Bay.

Dr John Rogers, senior researcher of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Cape Town (UCT) said the actual size of an iceberg was eight times bigger underwater than it was above the surface.

"If the iceberg is 20m high above the surface, it means there's another 160m of iceberg below the waterline."

He reckoned the iceberg had been pushed towards the shore by the strong Agulhas current, but it would probably be pushed away from the shore again by the Agulhas bank.

As a marine biologist he had encountered quite a few rocks on the ocean bed that could only have been brought that far by icebergs.

According to Rogers, the British Navy reported an iceberg about 60 nautical miles off Cape Point in the 1800s. He said bigger chunks of iceberg were breaking off because of global warming.

Dr Peter Roberts of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a specialist on global warming and climate change said he thinks this is a joke.

"It's impossible. No iceberg can float in the warm Mozambican current, it would have melted long ago!" he said.

- Die Burger