In Antarctica, an iceberg crashed into an island where penguins usually live. Spoiler alert: no one was hurt
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In Antarctica, the D-30A iceberg, more than 70 km long, collided with Clarence Island, where penguins usually breed.
No animal was injured, as the penguins were not “at home” at the time of the collision, reports Space.com with reference to data from the NASA Observatory.
According to scientists, iceberg D-30A crashed into the island on September 6.
According to satellite images that captured the moment of the collision, after the iceberg hit the southern coast of the island, the iceberg changed direction to the east of the island.
| Photo: NASA |
“This is the largest remaining piece of D-30 debris that appeared in June 2021 when its ‘parent’ D-28 crashed into land in East Antarctica and broke in half. Since then, D-30A has drifted slowly west along the Antarctic coast,” – scientists say.
In late 2022, D-30A changed course and approached Clarence Island, the easternmost of the South Shetland Islands, which has a surface area approximately 10 times smaller than D-30A.
Scientists said that about 10,000 Belted penguins nest on Clarence Island every winter.
“The moment of collision was good, because the penguins had not yet managed to return there.” said Heather Lynch, an ecologist at Stony Brook University in New York.
She added that if the collision had occurred several months later, when the penguins were on the island, the collision would have had “pretty serious” consequences.
We previously reported that thousands of emperor penguin chicks died in Antarctica as a result of global warming.
Read also: “Little jumpers”: Ukrainian polar explorers showed how penguins jump out of the water. VIDEO
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