Greenland Blog
7 mins read
Disko Bay, Greenland: Why This Stretch of Coast Is Called Iceberg Alley
Every summer, off the west coast of Greenland, ice the size of city blocks breaks free from a glacier and drifts silently into open water. Fishing boats slow down. Cameras come out. Quark Expedition Leader David “Woody” Wood, says his team will sometimes cut the engine mid-channel so guests can hear it: a low crack, then a rolling roar, as a slab the size of an apartment building tips into the sea. This is Disko Bay, and locals have a fitting nickname for the water where it happens: Iceberg Alley. Quark Expeditions sails two Arctic itineraries through this region: the 11-day West Greenland: Discovering Massive Icebergs and Inuit Communities, Northbound, where Disko Bay is a headline stop, and the 16-day West Greenland: Exploring the Far North, which adds a push to Greenland’s northernmost communities. Why Disko Bay Produces Such Massive Icebergs The short answer is Jakobshavn Glacier, known locally as Sermeq Kujalleq. It drains about 6.5% of the entire Greenland Ice Sheet and, according to NASA and European Space Agency observations, produces around 10% of all Greenland’s icebergs. It pushes ice toward the coast at speeds that have exceeded 40 meters a day during peak summer flow, among the fastest rates ever recorded for any glacier on Earth. When that river of ice reaches the sea, it does not melt gently. It calves in enormous, sometimes thunderous fractures. This is the source of Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004 and the channel through which Jakobshavn’s ice reaches Disko Bay. The fjord acts almost like a funnel, concentrating an extraordinary volume of ice into a narrow channel […]
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