University of Otago Antarctic researcher Christina Hulbe said yesterday it was headed further into the Weddell Sea and most likely into the South Atlantic.
It would not be moving towards the Otago coast, she said.
In 2006, hermit sheep Shrek was shorn on an iceberg 90km off the Otago coast.
The new iceberg, which broke off the Larsen C ice shelf this week, was "huge - twice the area of Stewart Island and 1155 times the volume of Wellington Harbour".
Prof Hulbe, who is dean of the university School of Surveying, said one of the "really exciting" aspects of this iceberg calving was "how well it had been observed".
That was due to the number of Earth-observing satellites and British Midas project scientists, who had been observing the event.
"Big icebergs are rare and that means we don’t have very many high-resolution observations of the processes leading to their production."
This made it hard to either develop or test good theories. The latest calving would not increase sea level, and it was unclear what the influence of climate change had been, if any.
The previous "really big iceberg" calved from the front of the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. It became stuck around Ross Island, causing trouble for shipping.
