Overview
- A mid‑January 2026 storm caused a roughly 500‑metre by 300‑metre section of ice to calve from the shelf near Germany’s Neumayer Station III and carry seven shipping containers into the Weddell Sea.
- Teams aboard the icebreaker RV Polarstern and helicopters recovered about one tonne of gear, including three drums with roughly 580 litres of diesel, before glaciologists stopped retrieval on January 25 because the berg was judged too unstable.
- Satellite imagery last saw the iceberg on February 22 and it then vanished from monitoring, leading AWI investigators to conclude the berg disintegrated and the remaining containers probably sank and released their fuel.
- One container held about 9,500 litres of Arctic diesel, which is lighter and more volatile than heavy fuel oil but will degrade slowly in the cold Southern Ocean, so the precise environmental impacts remain uncertain.
- In response, Germany and the Alfred Wegener Institute have set a new minimum staging distance of about 5,000 metres from the ice edge and will expand glaciological surveys to reduce the risk of future losses.