A huge iceberg has set sail past a tiny town in Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador, drawing in huge crowds of snap-happy tourists.
This year’s Easter weekend witnessed a particularly huge iceberg drift down the eastern shores of Ferryland, a coastal town in Newfoundland with a population of around 500. Although it’s hard to make a sturdy estimation, some are saying the iceberg could measure upwards of 46 meters (150 feet) in height.
“It’s the biggest one I [have] ever seen around here,” Ferryland mayor Adrian Kavanagh told the Canadian Press. “It’s a huge iceberg and it’s in so close that people can get a good photograph of it.”
He added that the iceberg appears to be grounded so it’s likely to stay around for some time.
The coast of Newfoundland and Labrador is known as "iceberg alley" thanks to the migration of icebergs drifting from the Arctic each spring when the weather begins to warm up. This year has been an exceptional one for icebergs in the Atlantic. There have already been 616 icebergs documented in the North Atlantic shipping lanes. By the end of the season last year in late-September, there was a total of 687 spotted.
"There are certainly a significant amount of icebergs out there. When you look at the iceberg chart it's truly incredible," Rebecca Acton-Bond, acting superintendent of ice operations with the Canadian Coast Guard, told CBC News. “Usually you don't see these numbers until the end of May or June. So the number of icebergs that we're seeing right now, it really is quite something.”
While this is all a real pain for shipping, Newfoundland’s tourism industry and its Twitter and Instagramming locals are more than happy for the towering iceberg to chill out on their coast for a little while longer.
2
