Various icebergs as big as buildings started to drift along the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, resulting to locals and tourists to come and take a look at this seasonal sight. However, local fishermen see this as a problem to their daily job.
Local fishermen are complaining that these massive iceberg chunks are blocking the entrance to the harbor in the provincial capital of St. Johns, Live Science has reported. This is a huge concern for them as it could affect their livelihood.
Iceberg Quest Ocean Tours Owner Barry Rogers said that it has been a problem for a lot of fishermen because they must wait for the ice to be gone offshore. "A lot of our fisher folks are just tied to the wharf, waiting for the ice to move offshore," he said.
They said that these fishermen might have a bad luck on their boats as they are preventing to have an iceberg collision. Last year, International Ice Patrol has reported that there are 687 icebergs floated into the shipping lanes, a decrease from the previous years' record.
Last 2014, there were 1,546 icebergs in shipping lanes last 2014, making that year the sixth most severe season ever since 1990. In 2015, there are 1,165 icebergs floated into shipping lanes.
Ever since April 1912, when the "unsinkable" Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean because of icebergs collision, the International Ice Patrol has reported that here have been no report of boats repeating the history. They believe that it worked that way because of the group's warnings.
Iceberg-watching is a seasonal hobby for both locals and tourists in this part of Canada. There were 600 reportedly massive ice chunks floating on the coast this year, a huge increase from 80 iceberg sightings when the iceberg season started.
Many of these icebergs were believed to be split off from Greenland's ice sheet, according to a report published by the New York Times. It is still unclear why the number of icebergs traveling to the coast increased this year, with climate change cited as one of the believed factors.
