An iceberg taller than the one which sank the Titanic has made a small town in Canada’s Newfoundland a top tourist destination over the Easter long weekend.
The area was “swarming with people” taking photographs of the massive iceberg, residents told Canada’s CBC News.
The iceberg, which is stuck in shallow water near the small town of Ferryland, is estimated to measure some 46 metres (150ft) at its highest point.
“It’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen around here,” mayor Adrian Kavanagh told the Canadian Press. “It’s a huge iceberg and it’s in so close that people can get a good photograph of it.”
The iceberg has moved slightly and broken apart, but it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere soon.
“It’s not moving out of there unless this winds stay up for another while, because [the iceberg’s] right in on the shallow ground,” resident Don Costello told CBC explaining that whilst the ice has moved slightly and broken apart, it doesn’t look like it will float away anytime soon.
A large number of the ice blocks drift through the area, known as “Iceberg Alley”, from the Arctic each year, however the sightings usually take place later in the year.
“Usually you don’t see these numbers until the end of May or June. So the amount of icebergs that we’re seeing right now, it really is quite something,” Rebecca Acton-Bond, acting superintendent of ice operations with the Canadian Coast Guard, told CBC.
The icebergs are created by a process known as calving, in which chunks of ice break off from the edge of a glacier.
The iceberg that infamously sunk the Titanic in 1912 is believed to have measured about 30 metres (100ft) and to have come from a glacier in Greenland.