They are creating quite a stir and aircraft operators are cashing in on this amazing event. Even though New Zealand is the place where travellers leave from when they are heading to Antarctica, it has been 76 years since the last piece of Antarctica came to visit us.
The bergs have been travelling north for about five years and scientists have been monitoring their progress. The warmer waters cause them to dissolve more rapidly and it is the general consensus they will be gone in a few days. They have been moving about two kilometres a day and it is thought the larger of the two bergs will be visible from the coastline by the middle of next week but it could just as easily melt into the sea by then too. Many people have been able to view these majestic bergs through binoculars from the hills of Dunedin. Places like Signal Hill, Brockville and St Clair have been inundated with people hoping to catch a glimpse of the bergs floating by. "It was incredible. You gotta keep your focus on it 'cause otherwise it's gone," said one local. The bergs are about 60 kilometers off of the coastline from Dunedin. Yesterday, one of the local television stations sent a reporter and cameraman to view the berg; they descended onto the berg and sent the footage and reported from the berg itself. It has since broken into two pieces and is getting smaller by the day.
The larger of the two icebergs is about 300 meters long and 100 meters high. There are concerns that as the bergs lose the mass underneath them, they could flip over. There has been a marine warning alerting vessels in the area of the bergs as they do not come up on radar screens. Many people have taken the opportunity to get a closer view by flying over the giants and seeing for themselves the beauty and the size and the color. Ships were warned on Friday after an Air Force crew spotted about 100 of them just a few hundred kilometers off the southern coast. The tourist flights will continue while there is something to view and the demand is there. The science community has conferred and agrees that this is a natural event and not an effect of global warming but this will undoubtedly be under more scrutiny as more information is collected and investigated
