Canadian iceberg hunter on trail of white gold

Every morning, Kean who lives in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, sails out off the coast of the province with his crew members to hunt what has become his own personal white gold: icebergs. For over 20 years, he has hauled in the ice giants and then sold the water for a big profit to local companies. Armed with a pole and net, they wrap up precious fragments, each one weighing a ton or two, and fasten them to a hook of a crane on the boat’s deck, which winches them aboard. Kean then breaks the blocks and puts the pieces into 1,000-liter (265-gallon) containers to melt over the coming days.

‘Iceberg Corridor’ sparks tourist boom

‘Once a hub of cod fishing, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador now plays host to hordes of amateur photographers and tourists hoping to capture the epic ice melt for posterity. As winter ends, iceberg spotting begins.“It keeps getting better every year,” says Barry Strickland, a 58-year-old former fisherman who now takes tourists in his small boat around King’s Point in the north of the province.“We’ve got 135, 140 tour buses with older people coming into the town every season so it’s great for the economy.”Strickland’s boat excursions are often fully booked during the high season from May to July, with tourists coming from all around the world to King’s Point, a village of just 600 inhabitants.

Dark sides beneath shiny surface of economic gains

The tourism boom has helped offset the decline in the region’s traditional fishing industry, which is in crisis because of overfishing at the end of the last century. Some are even marketing “iceberg water” as the purest on Earth -- and selling it as a high-end luxury item. But beneath the shiny surface of economic success lie some dark truths. The Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the world. In mid-July, record temperatures were recorded near the North Pole. In recent years, the icebergs have drifted further and further south, posing a threat to shipping on this busy route between Europe and North America.