(Image: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images Reportage)

Fancy a vodka on the rocks? This Arctic iceberg could be heading for a luxury drink near you.

Floating off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada, this massive chunk of ice is big business. Iceberg hunters like Ed Kean and Philip Kennedy (below) have found a way to cash in on this unlikely crop: catching the floating icebergs in large nets, hauling them aboard and selling them on to upmarket mineral-water and vodka manufacturers.

These companies want the ice for its Arctic purity: the water in these icebergs is around 12,000 years old and probably contains very few pollutants. For millennia, this water has lain trapped and preserved in the glaciers of Greenland, only recently breaking off in chunks and drifting southwards to Canada at speeds of around 0.7 kilometres an hour.


(Image: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images Reportage)

Catching the ice and dragging it aboard is a rewarding but tricky task. In addition to the sheer difficulty of physically capturing and handling a massive ice chip, the iceberg hunters face increasing competition from each other as they fight to meet demand in a highly lucrative market.

Not everyone is happy with this icy harvest, however. Tour operators in the region say that this business is destroying one of its main visitor attractions. Iceberg tourism is one of the few growth industries since the decline of cod fishing in this cold, eastern stretch of Canada.

Clarification, 19 May, 2015: The speed of iceberg drift has been clarified since this article was first published.

This article appeared in print under the headline “The icemen cometh”