Antarctic Sound is about 60 km long (37 miles) and less than 15 km wide (9 miles) at its narrowest part. Though logic suggests it was named for the location, it was in fact named after the vessel Otto Nordenskiöld used during his Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 – 1904.
Antarctic Sound is nicknamed “Iceberg Alley,” as it is sometimes blocked by enormous tabular icebergs that bottleneck ship traffic to the Wendell Sea. These icebergs break off from the Ronne, Larsen, and Filchner ice shelves at the Weddell Sea’s southern edges. Antarctic Sound is a wild place, its cathedral-like icebergs and glaciated mountains of Trinity Peninsula imparting a distinct appearance unlike that of the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula.
An iceberg is a piece of freshwater ice more than 15 m long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water. Typically only about ten percent of the volume of an iceberg is above water.
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