EACH June, tourists flock to Newfoundland to catch a glimpse of icebergs. Sparkling as they twist in the frigid waves of the Labrador Sea, icebergs have become one of the Canadian island’s most important industries, attracting more than 100,000 visitors a year. But not everyone is satisfied merely watching the behemoth blocks of frozen freshwater – Ed Kean tries to catch them.
He uses his large fishing boat to harvest icebergs, then melts them and sells the water. Many local people swear to its purity and delicious taste. Kean’s mother won’t drink anything else.
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But Kean won’t have the iceberg business to himself for much longer. For decades, there has been talk of towing icebergs from the poles to warmer climes to slake the thirst of increasingly parched communities around the world. Now, there are at least three outfits with plans to make it happen. Iceberg harvesting is a concept that has always intrigued me, so I set out to discover whether it is really feasible on a large scale, and whether it can be done safely, without damaging our planet.
Iceberg wrangling isn’t as fanciful as it might sound. The UN predicts that, by 2030, . Yet, there is no absolute shortage of fresh water. It is just that around two-thirds of it is locked away in ice caps and glaciers, which produce tens of thousands of miraculous parcels of frozen fresh water every year and send them into the salty oceans.
First identify your iceberg
I began my investigations by finding out how Kean works. He starts by identifying promising bergs using satellite maps. If they are grounded on the seabed and stable, he uses a crane to scoop up huge masses of ice and feed them into a grinder. At other times, he nets loose chunks, then winches them aboard and hacks them apart using an axe before shovelling the pieces into huge plastic storage containers to melt.
Kean has been at this since the 1990s. Some years, he produces more than 1 million litres of water and sells it to local businesses. East Coast Glow uses the water in its cosmetic products, Quidi Vidi Brewery uses it to make beer and Auk Island Winery blends iceberg water into its berry wines. Since icebergs calve from glaciers that were largely formed before human-made pollution choked our atmosphere, the water they contain is purportedly among the cleanest on Earth. “Icebergs,” quips Kean, “taste like water should taste.”
The idea of towing icebergs from the poles to other parts of the world is more outlandish, but it has a long history. The oceanographer John Dove Isaacs was one of the first to expound it in its modern form. In 1956, he suggested capturing an 8-million-tonne iceberg in the Southern Ocean and towing it to San Diego, California, in 200 days. Another early dreamer was Mohamed Al-Faisal, a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family who became known as “the water prince”. In the 1970s, he concocted plans to tow an iceberg to the Arabian peninsula.
Over the years, iceberg-towing mania has waxed and waned, but now things may be at a tipping point. One notable proponent is Nick Sloane, a marine salvage engineer with a good dose of credibility as leader of the team that refloated the Costa Concordia, the vast cruise ship that struck a rock and partially sank in 2012. For the past few years, he has been working on a plan to tow icebergs to Cape Town, South Africa, which regularly experiences acute water shortages. Closer to the equator, the inventor plans to drag an iceberg to the United Arab Emirates as a source of drinking water. He also wants to use iceberg water to transform the country’s red sands into a green oasis, and recently to help protect what he believes will be a massive tourist attraction. Meanwhile, , a private company, is raising millions to tow an iceberg from Antarctica to warmer waters off the African coast and melt it into newly designed “water bags” to use as an emergency freshwater source in regions facing environmental disasters.
How to shift a berg
The first question these projects must confront is whether iceberg towing is physically feasible (before, for example, it melts). Here, prospects are looking good. Mariners already tow icebergs short distances to stop them colliding with oil rigs in the North Atlantic. The crews encircle the frozen targets with thousands of metres of ultra-high-strength polypropylene rope, closing the snare with a grapple and attaching a steel towing hawser to weigh down the rope. They have learned that it is essential to pull the berg at a point below its centre of mass, otherwise the force causes it to overturn.
It is also possible to move very big icebergs: in 2017, the Russian energy company Rosneft claimed to have . But when you tow, you must go slow. Vessels can travel at no more than 2 knots (a leisurely walking pace); higher speeds create vibrations that could fracture the ice and cause it to break apart or jolt off the securing ropes.
Towing long distances looks feasible too. Recently, at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts used a mathematical model to simulate icebergs being towed from Antarctica to Cape Town and the United Arab Emirates. Considering solar radiation, wave erosion and heat exchange between the ocean and iceberg, he calculated that an iceberg 300 metres long and 200 metres thick at the time of capture would reach Cape Town with . That would meet the basic drinking water needs of some 700,000 people, or around one-fifth of the city’s population, for one day. Wrapping the berg in an insulating material would result in significantly more surviving. There could also be ways of making the towing easier, for example, releasing bergs into the clockwise-flowing Antarctic Circumpolar current and then, at the right moment, towing them into the northward-flowing Benguela current along the west coast of Africa.
Iceberg ecology
Even if iceberg towing is possible, it still may not be a great idea due to its environmental consequences. After calving, an iceberg freshens the surrounding ocean water and releases nutrients such as nitrates, phosphates, iron and sulphur. The denser, saltier water nearby sinks and causes water to circulate, creating an upwelling current that brings more nutrient-rich water to the surface. A web of life then develops around, underneath and above the iceberg. Single-celled algae such as diatoms use these minerals and their photosynthesising power to generate energy and grow. Krill then feed on these phytoplankton and make homes in the cracks and crevices of the iceberg. Icefish, comb jellies and segmented worms live among the phytoplankton, too. And icebergs are also important for seabirds, penguins, seals, whales and polar bears. Depending on the size of the berg, the radius of enrichment can stretch for kilometres.
Relocating icebergs would destroy these ecosystems. It would also short-circuit the ability of icebergs to sequester carbon dioxide and require considerable amounts of energy. And it would have an impact on the warmer waters into which any berg were towed. Estimating what exactly would happen is tricky until we actually try it. Olav Orheim, a former director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, who is working with Sloane, is in favour of giving it a go. “We can better figure out the environmental consequences once we have actually accomplished the feat,” he says. Others believe more research is required first, but most people I spoke to support the idea in principle because of its potential for good.
My investigations have convinced me that someone is going to try long-distance iceberg towing sooner or later. Personally, I am intrigued and only a little worried to see what happens. Ultimately, the impact of iceberg harvesting will depend on its scale and rate. Here, perhaps, we should take a lesson from history because all of us know that when human hubris meets an iceberg head on, the result can be disastrous.
Matthew H. Birkhold practises lassoing ice cubes in the bath. His book Chasing Icebergs is out now
