Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Helicopter company hopes iceberg comes closer

Updated at 7:38 pm on 9 November 2009

The director of a helicopter company that made sightseeing flights to icebergs off Otago in 2006, hopes another iceberg now in the Southern Ocean moves closer to New Zealand.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research says the 500m-long iceberg is floating near Macquarie Island about 1000km southwest of New Zealand.

Helicopters Otago managing director Graeme Gale says people flocked from Australia and Norway to see the icebergs three years ago.

He says photographs could not capture the colours in the ice that were only visible with the naked eye.

Mr Gale says the iceberg will need to be within 150km of the New Zealand coast for a helicopter to reach it.

Water source?

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) says an iceberg drifting towards New Zealand could be a source fresh water.

Mike Williams from NIWA says when an iceberg floated close to Otago in 2006, he received inquiries from people who wanted to turn it into fresh water.

Dr Williams says as an iceberg is consolidated snow it could make drinkable water, and air trapped in the ice might make the water fizzy.

But he says studies in the 1970s failed to find a cost-effective way of using icebergs as a source of fresh water.

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