Huge Iceberg's Remnants Spotted 13 Years Later

B-15T iceberg Antarctica — The B-15T iceberg, spotted here off the Mawson Coast in East Antarctica, is a remnant of the world's largest recorded iceberg.

(Image credit: NASA)

Swept halfway around Antarctica by ocean currents, a remnant of the world's largest recorded iceberg still drifts at sea, a new satellite image reveals.

Spotted near the Mawson Coast in East Antarctica on March 16 by NASA's Aqua satellite, the B-15T iceberg was once part of the 4,250-square-mile (11,000 square kilometers) B-15 iceberg. NASA's satellite snapped a shot of the 13-year-old iceberg floating near the Amery Ice Shelf, far from its birthing ground, the Antarctic Sun reported.

The enormous B-15 berg peeled away from Antarctica' Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000, quickly shattering into a number of smaller ice chunks. But in this case, small is relative, as fragment B-15A was 2,470 square miles (6,400 square km) and clogged McMurdo Sound. The extreme pack ice in McMurdo Sound killed some emperor penguins and forced others to move to less-than-ideal breeding grounds, researchers found.

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Becky Oskin covers Earth science, climate change and space, as well as general science topics. Becky was a science reporter at Live Science and The Pasadena Star-News; she has freelanced for New Scientist and the American Institute of Physics. She earned a master's degree in geology from Caltech, a bachelor's degree from Washington State University, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz.