(wind whirring) (wave crashing)
- [Diane] There's no safe iceberg to be close to.
(playful instrumental music)
They can turn, break, implode in a second
with no warning.
(iceberg booming)
(playful instrumental music continues)
- [Bob] It's a sense of awe, it's a sense of fear.
- [Dr. Bruneau] It's kind of like an asteroid or a meteor,
that we see coming towards us.
We have a temperate climate, but we have an arctic ocean,
and we have these arctic visitors,
which are seemingly so far out of place.
- [Diane] You can just look out your kitchen window,
and see an iceberg.
We're that lucky here.
- [Narrator] Icebergs are typically found
in the world's most remote, coldest, and dangerous seas.
But each spring along Newfoundland's northeast coast,
thanks to one singular geological phenomenon,
something remarkable happens.
Hundreds of icebergs collide with everyday life.
What are these icebergs doing here?
And why is it imperative that we keep our eyes on them?
(playful instrumental music continues)
(light playful music)
- There's something about cresting a hill
or coming around a corner,
and all of a sudden realizing
that there's an iceberg in the community
that is twice as tall as the church.
So that'll be about a medium to small iceberg,
that's a large one out there.
The past two years we've had very few icebergs
and this year it has been wild.
Our icebergs come from Greenland,
takes them two to three years to get here.
And the path has become known as Iceberg Alley.
- What is Iceberg Alley?
It is a pretty narrow lane,
that icebergs come barreling down the coast,
seasonally here in Newfoundland and Labrador,
and these are big buffalo.
They might well average half a million tons each.
Icebergs are an artifact of continental glaciation.
Glaciers creep their way
towards the water line, to the ocean,
and large chunks of ice break off.
(iceberg booming)
We could go out and find an iceberg
that is from ice that's 10,000 years old.
- There's a lot of life associated with these icebergs.
There's a lot of krill that's generated
from sea ice and icebergs.
There will be a lot of fish that gather around icebergs.
- Icebergs in the spring bring us seals
and many more polar bears,
because polar bears travel on the ice
after the seals.
- [Bob] You get waterfowl as well,
and I know in particular,
sometimes you get snowy owls on them
'cause they'll follow with the sea ice
and they'll basically make the iceberg their home.
(waves crashing) (light playful music)
- Icebergs can be dangerous in a number of ways.
Historically, we know that over a hundred years ago,
the Titanic sank off Newfoundland,
southeast of St. John's,
so that iceberg made the full circuit
from Greenland, around Iceberg Alley,
and all the way down.
- That incident precipitated the creation
of the International Ice Patrol.
Each year, a specially-equipped Hercules aircraft,
flies out and does a lawnmower-type pattern of surveillance
to determine what is the boundary for safe passage.
- Icebergs damage nets, they destroy fishing gear.
I started off doing whale-watching tours.
Now the industry has changed completely.
Icebergs are a prominent feature of our tourism industry.
(tourists chatter and chuckle)
We're getting ready to go.
I gotta get everybody to load onto the boats.
- [Tourist] Yep. - We'll go down
this ladder right here.
It's for a posterity sake.
(boat engine revving) (gentle playful music)
And what particularly holds icebergs in this area,
(boat engine revving)
there's a lot of deep water channels with shallow shelves.
There are 9/10 below the surface, 1/10 above,
and once they get in there,
if the currents don't change,
they're basically locked in position.
Each one is unique.
They're all different sizes.
- Tabular iceberg is like table.
It's flat.
There are pinnacle icebergs
that are pointed like cathedrals,
and things like that.
The rounded ones are often shaped by the waves
because they've had water washed over them.
- [Dr. Bruneau] Most beautiful,
I think perhaps a dry dock type iceberg.
As its name would imply,
has almost a shallower area, like a bowl.
- You can see in the center there,
this will be called the pinnacle iceberg.
It has a nice peak on it.
It is also a dry dock.
You can see that some parts have broken off.
Get some huge chunks of ice over here.
One of the things that becomes more evident
when bergs get close,
is just how different the ice appears to be.
The glistening ice surface with water melting on it,
just makes it look almost artificial or plastic.
(iceberg booming) (water sloshing)
- [Tourist] Wow!
- I'd say we're just gonna go past the debris field.
This all founder from underneath, actually.
So I had to be really careful with the ice chunks.
(gentle inspirational music)
- [Dr. Bruneau] It's like an ocean full of seltzer.
The bubbles that are in the ice are really trapped air
from the successive snowfall
before the industrial age.
(gentle inspirational music continues)
(water guggling) (wind whirring)
- [Diane] Newfoundlanders like to collect clean iceberg ice
from the ocean with a dip net.
They'll scoop it up and they enjoy it in a cold drink.
(gentle inspirational music continues)
(Bob exhales sharply)
- [Bob] No, I can't imagine Newfoundland without icebergs.
It's as a part of Newfoundland,
as our whales and our sea life.
The good and the bad.
- [Dr. Bruneau] It's kind of like an artist's painting
that's just transient in time.
Something that gets wiped out after a week, it's gone.
And it will never be back exactly the same.
- I've said icebergs are my crystals.
They give me energy.
They can totally change the mood for me.
I'm that passionate about icebergs,
that an iceberg can make me cry.
I think it's the most beautiful thing.
Everyone has things that they love.
And for me it's icebergs.
(gentle inspirational music continues)