expedition to an iceberg the size of Jamaica which broke away from the Antarctic ice shelf in March.

And BUEI is involved in the exploration of the "ice island'', not only through its sponsorship but also through the involvement of two of its scientific advisors.

BUEI advisor and New England Aquarium associate director Dr. Gregory Stone is chief scientist, the assigned National Geographic Magazine article author and co-leader of the expedition.

He will be joined by fellow BUEI advisor and College of the Atlantic in Maine president Dr. Steve Katona who will serve as the senior marine mammal scientist.

BUEI sponsors iceberg research Dr. Stone specialises in marine conservation, marine mammal research and deep sea technology.

Meanwhile Dr. Katona is a world renowned specialist in the study of whales, especially humpbacks, and has written a field guide to whales, porpoises and seals.

National Geographic is also sponsoring the expedition along with the New England Aquarium, Kurtis HD Partners and The College of the Atlantic.

The expedition will leave from the same port in New Zealand that explorers Shakleton and Scott used when they set out to explore the frozen southern continent of Antarctica.

They will travel on the ship Braveheart to the iceberg and study it from January 15 to mid-March next year.

On the return journey, the expedition will survey the marine life of a series of sub-Antarctic islands including the Belleny Islands, Campbell Island and the Auckland Islands.

The ice island presents a once-in-a-generation chance to study the mechanisms and make up of Antarctic ice, the nature of ice-edge ecologies, implications of global warming and will be a last opportunity to glimpse and recover doomed artifacts from the staging grounds of early Antarctic explorations.

The iceberg, called B-15, takes with it an area known as the Bay of Whales, a natural harbour on the eastern end of the iceberg that provided a series of bases for both Roald Amunsden and Richard Byrd's exploration of the continent.

The giant iceberg is now on a journey of its own as it drifts through Antarctica's seas and no team of scientists has yet visited, studied, or explored it.

B-15 is estimated to be 25 miles wide by 180 miles long, with a total area of approximately 4,250 square miles, according to scientists.

This means the iceberg is slightly bigger in area than Jamaica or the island of Hawaii.

Scientists estimate the iceberg is about 98 feet high and extends about 1,300 feet below the surface.

Scientists have also estimated that the amount of water in the iceberg is equal to four to eight inches of rain over the entire land area of the earth.

Climate scientists are not certain weather global warming is related to the breakup of small ice shelves or not.

Warming in Antarctica may also be related to regional weather patterns and seasonal fluctuations in ice coverage.

Antarctica has some seven million cubic miles of ice, representing 90 percent of the worlds total.

Although the ice is three miles thick in places, it averages one and a half miles in thickness.

Antarctica is as large as the US and Mexico combined, and scientists have calculated that if the west Antarctic ice sheet were to melt, global seas would rise by 15 to 20 feet, and if the east ice sheet were to melt as well, seas would rise by as much as 200 feet, swamping many oceanic islands and redrawing the world's coastlines.