Mysterious Black Iceberg Spotted In Canada, Internet Debates Its Dark Origins

A rare black iceberg has been spotted off the coast of Labrador, Canada, leading to intense social media chatter regarding its origin and history. The image was first captured by a fish harvester named Hallur Antoniussen, who was out fishing for shrimp in Carbonear last month. Aboard his fishing trawler Saputi, Mr Antoniussen was left gobsmacked by the iceberg, as black as soot, floating serenely amidst the pale chunks of ice.

"I have seen icebergs that are rolled, what they say have rolled in the beach with some rocks in it. This one here is completely different. It's not only that he is all black. He is almost in a diamond shape," Mr Antoniussen told CBC Radio.

The 64-year-old said it was hard to estimate the size of the iceberg at sea, but figured it was at least three times the size of a regular bungalow.

"It's something you don't see very often, and a camera is not something I run around [with] when I'm working. So, I just ran to my room and took my phone and snapped this picture," he said.

As the picture went viral, social media users marvelled at the uniqueness of the iceberg while others attempted to come up with a theory about the reason for its dark colour.

"I have seen lots of big icebergs but never a black one," said one user while another added: "This is my first time seeing a black iceberg!!"

A third commented: "It's likely a boulder resting on the surface of the ice that rolled or fell onto the glacier on land prior to the iceberg being calved at tidewater on the coast of Greenland."

Why the dark colour?

Icebergs mostly appear white due to tiny trapped pockets of air that scatter all wavelengths of light. As ice ages and gets compressed, air is pushed out, allowing more light to penetrate, and becoming clear, like glass.

However, some icebergs can have a black or greyish tint due to dirt and other dark material that becomes bound up in the ice, sometimes as it rolls over a dark surface. As per glaciologist Lev Tarasov of Memorial University in Canada, one working theory is that the black berg was once part of a larger glacier that broke off and fell into the ocean.

"Over time, as it travels around Baffin Bay and down the coast of Labrador, it's melting away. So I think a lot of that ice is melted away. Maybe the part that's clean is underneath, right? Again, 90 per cent of the ice is underneath the water. So we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg on top," said Mr Tarasov.