The Iceberg is an enclave, an archipelago of suspended oil collectors and separators, inhabited structures; a water-world in constant navigation. A drifting political territory of temporary autonomy, an antient limb of the British Petroleum Corporation, it is occupied by an evolved maritime mining and refining community existent at sea.
Searching and hunting with unwavering intensity, for suspended oil plumes in the pelagic depths of our oceans. Lost oil, forgotten and unclaimed through leakages, industrial run off, and devastating spillages. A re-exploration of our poisoned ocean waters in search of these vast accumulated reserves trapped in the ocean currents and gyres of our world.
The Icebergs hunt the North Pacific and North Atlantic gyres. Currents where the majority of oil spills and leakages have occurred, and have potentially collected. It is already known that oil plumes 22km x 15km across and 10km deep exist in the oceans; these blankets of poison are extremely detrimental to all marine life. Often these plumes completely block out the sun to the depths below, killing off phytoplankton blooms and photosynthesising marine flora, increasing the presence of carbon dioxide, which in turn increases sea acidity levels, causing catastrophic coral reef bleaching and the death of local marine ecosystems.
Thick ice clings to the Iceberg, drift and pack ice gathered and collected in the earth's poles, maintained in the Southern and Arctic Ocean, slowly melting as the archipelago drifts into warmer waters, releasing minerals and nutrients into the ocean water. Marine life is stimulated by its creviced and cavernous form. The nutrient rich waters occupy a thriving water column suspended beneath the icebergs. Its long raking tentacle-like hairs hug the water line and deep reaches, anchoring it in an ephemeral suspension, gathering all manner of aquatic life, nutrients and flotsam.
'The Iceberg' is deployed as part of an environmental and geopolitical resistance. It occupies and proliferates, scouring the ocean currents and gyres; it drifts hungry and alive. The enclave fishes, trades and exists at sea often for years at a time, dissolving only when its hulls are full, returning to Britain to deposit this black gold obsession.
Mr John Bell
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• Entry Date: 15 September 2011
• Last Update: 15 September 2011