Canada: Exploiting clean water from icebergs

Every summer, the experienced seafarer Ed Kean, 53, set out for the North Atlantic to collect ice sheets off the Greenland glacier and drift south.

Kean harvesting ice provides local producers of alcohol, soft drinks and bottled water. These companies use water trapped in glaciers for thousands of years for their products and promote the purest water on the planet. They said the demand for pure water is increasing but the work of gathering high-value ice blocks is also becoming more and more difficult.

Tape collection requires tools such as a giant net, rifle and chain saw. Currently, Ed Kean not only struggles with non-navigable drift ice blocks - with increasing selling prices according to the price of running fuel - but also has to deal with a few travel companies that accuse the exploitation. icebergs are gnawing at the beautiful and beautiful glaciers that their visitors want to see. Anyway, the demand for ice water is booming in Canada.

Ed Kean and his colleagues picked up the iceberg at sea

Every spring, before going to the beach, Ed Kean takes time to find a way for his Green Waters to serve the annual iceberg hunting season. In every May, Kean crosses over 1,500km from St. St. Port. John's in Newfoundland and Labrador Province, east of Canada, faces north to search for the most valuable icebergs for ice hunting season. Kean always communicates regularly with friends and meets people living in villages along the coast to find information about the locations of icebergs.

Kean also regularly calls his wife - Marina, who keeps track of sites that locate icebergs like icebergfinder.com. After finding the appropriate glacier, Kean evaluated its path and mobilized vehicles and people to go to the road to collect. E Kean's iceberg collection also requires a local government license.

Hugh McDermott, General Manager of Quidi Vidi Brewing Co. in St. John's, complaining that the ice supply to the company is still not enough for local Iceberg Beer brewers to sell locally during the summer. David Myers, owner of private wine producer Canadian Iceberg Vodka Corp. In Toronto, said, the business from water stored in ice mountains is extremely prosperous.

Other Ed Kean customers include Auk Island Winery and Berg Water in Newfoundland province. Ed Kean is the only person who supplies natural ice blocks to these beverage companies. They examined water samples from icebergs and confirmed very clean quality because the water was kept in the ice for many years, without being affected by the environment, air and sea water.

Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder, said that although he had not conducted a comparison test of water from ice and tap water, he believed the blocks of ice harvested from the array Greenland ice is "absolutely pure" . Serreze also often drinks alcohol produced with the pure water component of the iceberg and considers it "excellent".

Iceberg Vodka factory of private company Canadian Iceberg Vodka Corp.in Toronto.

The ice-making work brought Ed Kean hundreds of thousands of dollars every time "hit the season" . On the sea, Kean uses a shovel to chop ice cubes, then use a winch to transfer the ice sheet to the tanker. Upon arrival, Kean makes the ice melt and store water before delivering it to the customer. In the past few years, when small ice floats on the sea are not many, Kean uses a gun to fire at giant ice sheets to separate it into many smaller blocks. Kean also uses axes or chain saws to split ice mountains.

Travel companies criticizing Ed Kean are undermining the natural beauty of icebergs that attract many visitors to visit every summer. Cecil Stockley, Director of Iceberg Man Tours in Twillingate, Newfoundland, asks Ed Kean to work away from coastal villages and the way visitors visit so they don't see him chopping mountains. The ice is cruel. Meanwhile, Ed Kean and his client companies said only a very small percentage of the giant icebergs were exploited and the work was also carried out quite far away from the crowded places .

Ed Kean began to care about icebergs from the 90s of last century, when a local nonprofit organization contacted him, asking for help with their ice-related project. At that time, Kean was a normal fisherman. In 1997, Iceberg Beverage Vodka offered Kean to collect ice floes on the sea to supply them.

Working with Ed Kean for ice-skating work is Justin Crummy - a former amateur wrestler. Ed Kean regularly watched the sea surface with binoculars to search for icebergs despite the thick fog covering. It was sometimes discovered that the iceberg was a few hundred kills away from the coast, but when it reached the place it was gone