Iceberg Rolls Over at King's Point, Newfoundland: Why Icebergs Flip

On 4 August 2015, Jason Griffiths was filming a pale blue iceberg off King's Point, Newfoundland, when it suddenly rolled over and broke apart, turning a calm summer scene into a churning swirl of ice and water. His video, "Iceberg rolling over and breaking", shows just how unstable these drifting giants can be.

The King's Point iceberg video

Griffiths recorded the clip on 4 August 2015 and uploaded it to YouTube the following day. Leafy branches frame the foreground, and beyond them the iceberg sits in the bay until its outline begins to shift. As it turns, surfaces that were hidden underwater swing up into view, and the berg breaks apart.

Why icebergs roll over

Only about 10 percent of an iceberg shows above the water. Pure glacier ice has a density of about 920 kg/m³, against roughly 1,025 kg/m³ for seawater, so around 90 percent of its volume hangs out of sight below the surface.

That hidden mass is what makes a berg roll. As an iceberg melts in warmer summer water and pieces break off, its centre of gravity shifts. When the balance tips, the berg capsizes to find a new stable position, often without any warning. Icebergs in Newfoundland waters usually float on their side, not upright, and can flip several times as they shrink. As they break down, they leave smaller fragments that the International Ice Patrol classifies as bergy bits (1–5 m high) and growlers (under 1 m high and less than 5 m long).

King's Point and Green Bay

King's Point is a small town of about 650 people on the north shore of the southwest arm of Green Bay, on Newfoundland's north coast. It is named after James King, the first known European settler, who set up a fishing premises here in the 1860s. Before then the area supplied timber to French fishermen, and long before that it was home to the Maritime Archaic peoples and later the Beothuk. The town is about 24 km from Springdale along Route 391 and about 10 km off the Trans-Canada Highway.

Iceberg Alley: where Newfoundland's icebergs come from

About 90 percent of the icebergs seen off Newfoundland and Labrador break off glaciers in western Greenland; the rest come from Canada's Arctic. The ice is around 10,000 years old. Carried south by currents, the bergs drift down the Labrador coast and along the island of Newfoundland in a corridor known as Iceberg Alley. It was an iceberg in these waters, about 400 miles off the coast, that sank the Titanic in 1912.

Today the ice is a tourist draw, and even an ingredient: iceberg water is bottled, and local producers use it to make vodka, gin, rum and beer.

When and where to see icebergs in Newfoundland

• Season: icebergs pass from spring into early summer. April and May bring the most, but sea ice can block the view, so late May and early June are often best. The season runs longer in the north, as the August sighting at King's Point shows.
• Where: popular viewpoints from north to south include St. Anthony, La Scie, Twillingate, Fogo Island, Bonavista, Cape Spear near St. John's, and Bay Bulls/Witless Bay.
• Tracking: the province's IcebergFinder.com map shows where bergs have been spotted.
• Bonus: whales and seabirds migrate north as the icebergs drift south, so one boat trip can bring all three.

Keep your distance: the provincial tourism guidance is to stay back by at least the iceberg's length or twice its height, whichever is greater, because falling ice, sudden waves and submerged ice all reach well beyond the visible berg.

For more ice on the move, see An Iceberg Arch Collapses in Newfoundland, explore Daniel Kordan’s Greenland sailing collection, or read our explanation of a world without land ice.

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