Antarctic Icebergs

There isn’t too much to say about ice bergs! Just that I saw more than I could count, and that they come in all shapes and sizes. many of them and they came in all shapes in sizes. Without trees or buildings next to them, sometimes it’s hard to appreciate how massive some of these guys can be. Again I must apologize for sharing these ancient super low res shots, but hopefully you can still understand how beautiful some of these natural works of art are! These two icebergs above were massive, and I’d estimate they were each at least 20 feet (7 meters) in height, although they could even be taller. The icebergs below were much smaller, but you can see these two are completely different from each other. One is is polished and smooth while the one on the lower right is jagged.

Here are two more distinct icebergs. The massive structure on the left with the natural arch reminded me of a feature I had just seen in New Zealand months before. The rock formation in New Zealand’s north island was famously called the Hole in the Rock, so the Hole in the Ice seemed the appropriate name for this iceberg. the upper left, a large iceberg has become stuck after it drifted into a bay. I called the iceberg to the right, Hole in the Ice, because it reminded me of Hole in the Rock in the bay of islands New Zealand. The natural arch that floated by was the only one of its kind that I saw. Much more common was these sheet ice. Not considered miniature icebergs at all, but technically they could be!

There was almost always an overcast while I was in Antarctica so the colors in the pictures weren’t as brilliant as they could have been, but regardless they were more than enough for me. The colorful shades change quickly as the ice descends into the water, and just a small change in the intensity of the sun can dramatize the beauty here. Another phenomenon is entirely blue icebergs due to the way water freezes as it expands. This compresses trapped gas inside, sometimes to the point that it gives the ice a solid blue color. Lastly, the iceberg on the right was one of my favorites. Rather than a solid structure, it was essentially a flat vessel carrying a cargo of small ice blocks.