A Record Iceberg Broke, And I have Questions

You may never have heard of A23a, but it's the world's largest iceberg, broken off from Antarctica way back in 1986. You may well wonder why it's still in existence after all these years. That's not typical. They tend to drift towards the equator, whether coming from north or south polar regions, breaking up and melting along the way in warmer waters. This one got hung up on sea bottom for 30 years, finally breaking free in 2020. Ocean forces sometimes kept it spinning, not making much progress north to warmer waters, so it has largely stayed intact. It's now heading for South Georgia, not to be confused for any of the other places on the globe with Georgia in their names. While it lost a much smaller piece previously, the newest one to break is about 12 miles long, or 31 square miles. The big piece is about 42 times bigger. Both are now full of fractures, and may well continue breaking up fairly quickly, especially compared to its history. Or perhaps not. We can't tell yet.

Where it's headed towards is a major feeding ground for seals and penguins, which makes it a problem. That is, if it stays together and doesn't break up rapidly. Other major ones heading that way have grounded, impacting the area with high mortality.

It isn't known how both will behave on their renewed journeys. Will they continue on their paths uninterrupted now, or still be subject to currents pushing them around on various directions, breaking them up further in our warmer seas before they reach the vulnerable populations of birds and seals? 

What I would like to know is this: if people were to embed large amounts of explosives in the cracks they now sport and set them off, would the resulting pieces melt much faster and cause fewer deaths? One thought is that with enough breaks between chunks, there would be gaps the animals could navigate to fish and come up for air between.

Or would there be a multitude of unintended consequences from the (presumably) many new smaller chunks on their way that such action would cause more harm than possible good?

I do seriously doubt anybody would take that idea seriously. There will be a contingent who feel the need to study how these huge icebergs melt and break up under current warming conditions, especially now that we have figured out that ocean water is coming in under them and melting the ones we thought were resting on land from the bottom. There will be those simply not willing to go to the work and expense of trying it, period, and there will be those who simply don't care about the penguins and seals and whether a new huge iceberg or two cause huge new levels of mortality to a place few of us think about anyway, except maybe from some fun movies we've watched years ago.

Still, I do wonder.

For the source of this info:   https://phys.org/news/2025-01-major-chunk-world-biggest-iceberg.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter