In July 2014 Wanda Stead and her husband Rick were idling in their boat in Newfoundland’s Bay of Exploits, filming a huge arched iceberg, when the arch cracked and tonnes of ice dropped into the sea within seconds. The wave that followed sent the couple racing for open water, and Wanda’s video became one of the most-shared iceberg clips of the year.
The Bay of Exploits iceberg collapse
Wanda Stead, from Gander in central Newfoundland, was filming while Rick drove the boat. The couple has a cabin in Cottlesville, on the bay’s shore, and icebergs drifting past are part of summer life there. This one had worn into a tall arch, the kind of shape that draws boats in for a closer look.
Speaking to CBC News two days later, Wanda estimated they were 30 to 45 metres (100 to 150 feet) from the ice. “We were too close,” she said. When the arch gave way, the falling ice pushed a powerful wave and a slurry of broken chunks across the water towards them. Rick started the engine and they pulled away to safety. Wanda shared the video afterwards as a warning to other boaters: “You never know with something that big … and people need to know.”
Why the ice looked smaller than it was
An iceberg always hides most of itself. Glacial ice has a density of about 920 kg per cubic metre, while seawater is about 1,025, so only around one tenth of a berg’s volume rides above the surface. The arch the Steads filmed was only the visible crown of a much larger block.
That hidden mass is also why icebergs are unstable. As a berg melts in warmer summer water and cracks along weak planes, its centre of gravity shifts. Arches and overhangs collapse, and whole bergs can roll over without warning. Each collapse or roll displaces a large volume of water and throws out a wave, which can swamp a small boat even at a distance that feels comfortable.
Iceberg Alley and the best time to visit
The icebergs that reach Newfoundland break off glaciers in western Greenland and drift south through the stretch of sea known as Iceberg Alley. The route runs from the Labrador coast down to the southeast coast of Newfoundland, passing the island’s northeast shore.
The Bay of Exploits sits right on that route. It covers about 1,000 square kilometres, holds more than 30 islands, and opens north into Notre Dame Bay at the mouth of the Exploits River. Lewisporte and Botwood lie on its shores, and Twillingate, on the Twillingate Islands, calls itself the “Iceberg Capital of the World”. Late May and early June are usually the peak weeks for bergs along this coast, though some linger into July, as this one did.
- Where to watch: headlands and harbours around Twillingate and Notre Dame Bay, or a licensed iceberg boat tour.
- When: late spring to early summer, with late May and early June the most reliable.
- On the water: keep a wide margin from any berg, especially one with arches, overhangs or fresh cracks.
The collapse on camera
Wanda Stead posted her video on the riickstead YouTube channel. It showed the arch from the boat, the moment it failed and the wave that followed.
For more moving ice, see Martin Bailey’s Antarctic Icebergs: Natural Forms and Imagined Buildings and Mendenhall’s Blue-Ice Interiors: Photographs of a Changing Glacier.
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