A ginormous black iceberg shaped like a diamond was spotted off the coast of Canada. While the ocean can often be a scary and mysterious place, encountering rare phenomena like this is enough to spook even the most experienced fisherman. Lone sea-worker Hallur Antoniussen stumbled across the giant block of discoloured ice while out in the water last month.
Despite being armed with numerous life rafts and buoyancy aids, the fisherman decided to keep his distance. Mr Antoniussen was out hoping to catch some fish, yet instead found something far more unusual and far larger. He spotted the black chunk of ice around 6 kilometres from his boat, with the fisherman predicting it to be three times the size of the average bungalow.
“I have seen icebergs that are rolled, what they say have rolled in the beach with some rocks in it,” he told CBC Radio.
“This one here is completely different. It’s not only that he is all black. He is almost…in a diamond shape.”
Mr Antoniussen, who is originally from the Faroe Islands, spotted the black ice while aboard a fishing trawler.
One of the reasons the ice may appear black is due to the glacier often grinding along the ground, resulting in debris becoming mixed up inside.
Glaciologist Dr Lev Tarasov, from Memorial University in Canada, has said this may be the case, with a lot of ice having melted away to reveal the underbelly.
“Over time, as it travels around Baffin Bay and down the coast of Labrador, it’s melting away,” he said.
“So I think a lot of that ice is melted away. Maybe the part that’s clean is underneath?
“Again, 90 % of the ice is underneath the water. So we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg on top.”
The discovery follows the humungous “mega iceberg” known as A23a, which has left scientists alarmed. This is due to its current path showing that it could be on course to collide with a tiny island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Weighing in at one billion tonnes, the iceberg has been tracked for years by experts after it broke off from the Antarctic ice sheet.
In 2024, the ice sheet became stuck. However, A23a is now reportedly on the move and heading directly for an island in the ocean known as South Georgia.
