Ann Wroe
speaker
865 appearances
15 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 21 Aug
Ann Wroe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 15 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.
Appearances
But A23 stayed at the bottom of the Wendell Sea for 30 years.
Then, it began to wobble and loosen its grip on the seabed.
This happened in 2020.
By April 2024,
It had drifted up towards South Georgia and it had met a great vortex of swirling water called a Taylor ice column from which it could not escape for quite some time.
As it was stuck, it was turned through 15 degrees every day, the whole huge mass of it.
It escaped more battered than ever with huge cracks and arches along its edges, like cloisters, and with caverns in which whole ships could disappear.
Almost every wave that hit in those tumultuous seas brought down crashing cascades of its own crumbling ice.
In the end, it was only half its size at carving by 2023.
What would its dissolution mean?
Opinion was divided.
On the one hand, far smaller icebergs breaking up near South Georgia had threatened ships.
They had blocked fishermen's access to their fishing grounds and the feeding grounds of fur seals and penguins.
So much fresh water spilling out into the sea reduced the krill and plankton that liked things saltier.
A vast mass of ice and rock grinding to the shore could destroy a host of sea slugs, coral and sponges.
On the other hand, disasters predicted in the past had not occurred.
The fur seals and penguins had suffered sharp declines for a time.
but then they had recovered.
Iceberg deaths were simply part of a polar life cycle that had been going on for generations.
Besides, A23a was so vast that its breakup would be like a bomb of nutrients exploding in the Southern Ocean.
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