Team of British Antarctic Survey Will Study Giant Iceberg

A team of scientists is being sent to the South Atlantic to study the giant iceberg A68a.

The 3,900-sq-km behemoth is currently drifting offshore of the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia where it threatens to run aground.

If that happens it could make life extremely difficult for the wildlife haven's penguins and seals as they go about foraging for fish and krill.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) will lead the expedition.

The researchers will approach A68a in the Royal Research Ship James Cook.

They'll use robotic underwater vehicles and sampling instruments to see how the frozen mass is influencing its environment.

Big bergs change the temperature of the sea around them and introduce huge volumes of fresh water as they melt. This affects conditions for all marine life - from the simplest planktonic organisms all the way up to the biggest creatures in the ocean, the whales.

A68 broke free from the Larsen C sector of Antarctica in 2017 and has been steadily moving north, away from the White Continent, ever since.

Recent months and weeks have seen it lose a lot of its bulk, so much so that it's just surrendered the title of the "world's biggest iceberg".

Nonetheless, its scale (roughly now the size of the English county of Suffolk) remains intimidating, especially when seen in satellite images moving only 90km from South Georgia's coast.

The researchers hope to be on site at the end of January.

They'll deploy two untethered submersible gliders that will spend almost four months in and around A68a.

"We'll probably put one each end of the berg," said BAS oceanographer Dr Povl Abrahamsen.

"They'll monitor seawater temperature and salinity, and collect measurements of...