Strange things that float by ... Islander awe over massive iceberg

It's a little outside of the remit for CNNGo, but the image above is up there in the 'Most Unusual Sights Ever Seen on the Horizon' category.

This giant slab of ice was spotted by scientists on the Australian territory of Macquarie Island -- about halfway between Australia and Antarctica in the Pacific Ocean.

Estimated at 50 meters high and 500 meters long, the iceberg was spotted about eight kilometers off the northwest of the island, according to a report from the Australian Antarctic Division.

"I've never seen anything like it; we looked out to the horizon and just saw this huge floating island of ice," the report quoted fur seal biologist Dr Dean Miller as saying.

Australian Antarctic Division Glaciologist, Neal Young, was quoted as saying the iceberg was likely to be from a section of the Ross Ice Shelf in that broke away from Antarctica about a decade ago.

The iceberg is expected to break up further and gradually melt.

The Australian Antarctic Division maintains a permanent base of only a few dozen people on Macquarie Island  -- the island's only human inhabitants. They join millions of seabirds and around 80,000 seals that arrive annually to breed on the island -- part of the reason the island is listed as a World Heritage Area.