A massive ice shelf rises vertically above the icy sea, with jagged, towering blue-white ice walls and floating chunks of ice in the foreground under a pale, overcast sky.
A group of emperor penguins is sliding off an icy edge into the cold ocean water, surrounded by floating ice and snow.

Ice Nomads

Nature & Wildlife·1 x 50 min·In Production

A23A: An ancient iceberg’s odyssey across storm-swept seas

Factsheet
Genre
Nature & Wildlife
Duration
1 × 50 min
Definition
4K
Audio
5.1
Status
In Production
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Synopsis

A23A is the code name for an extraordinary iceberg – one of the oldest and largest of all icebergs. This is the story of its epic journey across the turbulent waters of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

The saga began in the depths of the Weddell Sea, where A23A was born through a gigantic fracture that released an island of ice measuring 300 meters thick, 75 kilometres long, and 60 kilometres wide. One trillion tons of ice set adrift. Visible above water was an endless ice cliff 30 meters high, while 90% of the iceberg remained submerged beneath the waves. Thus began the remarkable odyssey of an Antarctic fragment that would become more than just an iceberg – it would become the protagonist of an adventure film.

Throughout its 40-year existence and more than 10,000 kilometres travelled, A23A’s life was defined by groundings, dramatic turns, traps set by ocean currents, assaults from monstrous storms and fractures. But most significantly, it was characterized by encounters. A multitude of animals and a few rare humans were either magnetically attracted to the ice monster or faced with an insurmountable wall.

A23A was as magnetic as it was terrifying. From the abysses to the surface, from the depths of Antarctica to South Georgia Island, it was both a source of life and death for everything with feathers, fur, eyelashes or scales in this part of the world. The cast included albatrosses, petrels, leopard seals, fur seals, emperor penguins and humpback whales alongside strange microscopic creatures generated by the iceberg itself. This was a world where beautiful stories and tragedies continuously intertwined – an allegory for the complexity of life.

At a depth of 300 meters, A23A became wedged against the underwater wall formed by the plateau of South Georgia Island. This marked the end of the journey for the ice leviathan, but not the end of the story.

Every day, the monster fragmented, sending thousands of ice emissaries of varying sizes towards South Georgia Island, where millions of birds and marine mammals reproduce. The impacts of these countless fragments would not always be positive. These more reasonably sized icebergs scraped the seabed around the island, destroying benthic life and kelp forests with their battering. Their accumulation in bays sometimes created veritable barriers for penguins – destruction following the genesis of life.

Winter arrived, storms subsided, and waters cooled, providing a reprieve for A23A. But the austral spring was terrible, with storms allied with equinox tides reaching unimaginable proportions. This was a formidable ordeal for the aging and fragile A23A.

Finally, in a tearing as powerful as the one that witnessed its birth, the old A23A broke into several enormous icebergs. This marked the end of one of the oldest icebergs of all time. As its freshwater merged with the ocean, A23A became part of a growing legacy of giants – harbingers of a warming world where accelerated ice shelf collapse promises even more colossal icebergs in the coming decades, dramatically altering marine ecosystems and contributing to the inexorable rise of global sea levels.

Team

Written and directed by Bertrand Loyer and Jérôme Bouvier
Executive producers Martin Mészáros, Sabine Holzer, Bertrand Loyer
Production companies A co-production of Terra Mater Studios and Saint Thomas Productions in association with ARTE G.E.I.E, USHUAIA TV and CNC
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