The Ilulissat Glacier, also known as the Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier, is the largest glacier in the Northern hemisphere that flows into the sea. The Ilulissat Glacier produces an amount of sweet water per day equivalent to the amount of water used by New York City in a year. This is the glacier seen from a vantage point just Northwest of the calving point, looking Westsouthwest towards the mouth of the icefjord through which it flows. 6.5-10% of all the glacier ice that flows out of the entire Greenland inland ice comes from Sermeq Kujalleq and reaches the sea after having passed through the Ilulissat Icefjord.
In 2004, UNESCO put the Ilulissat Icefjord on the World Heritage List under the sections "Earth's History and Geological Features" and "Superlative natural phenomena, scenic beauty".
The Ilulissat Glacier is one of the very few places in the World where you really experience giant icebergs up close. It is an experience you never forget. One thing is the sound. When the ice cracks or breaks, the tiny air bubbles in the ice are released, and after having been squeezed and compressed by the ice for centuries, the air bubbles are under such high pressure that they actually explode, making the ice fjord a very noisy place. You can also smell the ozone (O³) being released from the explosions as well as the oxygen (O²).
This bay between the icebergs didn't exist a few hours ago. If you set up a video camera and take a single frame every minute, you get a sequence showing you how the icebergs move around among each other constantly - spin around in circles, bump into each other - and wait for flood, finally to be released over the ridge down at the bottom of the fjord outlet that holds them back, and into the sea.
The shape and surface of the icebergs tell about their past. If their surface is smooth, the smooth surface has at one time been under water. This shows that the melting of the ice, and the breaking off of parts of the iceberg have changed the center of gravity, and made the iceberg roll around. When an iceberg this size begins to roll, you want to at a safe distance.
When an iceberg rolls over, you need to be well away from it, to avoid having thousands of tons of ice landing on you and your boat, and so far away that the "mini tsunamis" the breaking and rolling ice create, aren't strong enough to affect your boat.
When the sun shines on the icebergs, they take on a texture like whipped eggwhite. They seem almost alive.
Locals navigate the ice around Ilulissat and the glacier with great skill and attention. You need to be constantly aware of the ice that is everywhere - not least the "black ice", which is ice without any air bubbles in it, like the ice cubes you put in beverages. When ice contains ice bubbles it is white, but the less air bubbles, the more first blue and then black it looks. And chunks of black ice that are hardly visible at the surface, can do very bad things to the bottom of a boat.
But in spite of the risks connected with sailing in the area, the locals fish here 24 hours a day, most of the Summer helped by the midnight sun. Because of the high levels of oxygen in the water from the released air bubbles, the water is rich in life, and fish can be caught in large scale close to the entrance of the icefjord.
Next page - Rodebay in the Disco Bay
NASA - Fastest Glacier in Greenland Doubles Speed
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