Courtesy ESA

The iceberg above that looks like an aircraft carrier is 70 miles long, and has been drifting along the coast of Antarctica since it broke off from the Ross Ice Shelf in 2000.  At that time it was larger and was affectionately named the B-15, but the remainder you see above is called B-15A.  It holds the lofty title of World's Largest Free-Floating Object.

However, this ice block is not as majestic as it makes out.  In the past B-15A plugged up McMurdo Sound, where innocent penguin colonies were, in the words of the ESA, "decimated" when ice formed over their feeding grounds (waters, I mean), blocked from normal ocean currents by the gigantic iceberg. More recently, B-15A glanced off of the Drygalski ice tongue (above, at bottom), which was "chipped" you might say.  Two pieces are floating on either side of B-15A.

But now, as the above image makes imminently clear, this colossal beast is posed to ram head-on into the tongue of Aviator Glacier, where, if it remains for any lengthy period of time, it will cut off ocean currents from the stretch of coast just beneath it--home to Weddell seals, Skuas, and colonies of Adelie Penguins.

But of course there is nothing we can do.  There is nothing penguin lovers can do.  There is nothing animal-rights groups can do.  Stopping a 70-mile-long iceberg, however slow or evil it may be, is not in the realm of reasonable possibility.

Curse these icebergs.