Photo: Icebergs Last Visited the New Zealand Coast in 2006
New Zealand may soon have some icy visitors, prompting the country to issue coastal navigational warnings for shipping in the area.
More than 100 icebergs have been spotted via satellite floating towards the New Zealand coast, and indications are there could be hundreds more.
Not since 2006, when a similar ice floe invasion took place, with some coming as close as 25 kilometers of the coastline, have so many icebergs drifted into this vicinity.
According to scientist Neal Young, they are the remnants of a mammoth ice floe possibly measuring 30 square kilometers which broke off from Antarctica as sea and air temperatures rise. Some of the icebergs measure over 200 meters across, grouped in a cluster.
And the message from scientists is, get used to it. Young states: “If the current trends in global warming were to continue I would anticipate seeing more icebergs and the large ice shelves breaking up.”
When icebergs last visited the New Zealand coast in 2006, the country’s wool industry put it to practical, or rather, publicity, use and flew a sheep out to be shorn on one of the floes, a comical contrast to the ubiquitous ‘polar bear and iceberg’ image.
