Thousands of penguins die after iceberg traps colony

The iceberg’s grounding meant the penguins had to walk more than 60 kilometres (37 miles) to find food, impeding their breeding attempts, said the researchers from the University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) Climate Change Research Centre and New Zealand’s West Coast Penguin Trust.

Scientists predict that the colony would cease to exist in the next two decades if the giant iceberg remains lodged in the bay or fast ice within the bay fails to break up. The iceberg essentially has landlocked the penguins, forcing the animals to trek across a desolate stretch of almost 40 miles to find food.

According to Yahoo News up to 150,000 penguins have died due to an iceberg.

Since 2011, the Adelie population at Cape Denison has shrunk from 160,000 to just 10,000, the scientists wrote in their paper, published in the journal Antarctic Science.

With 93 percent of their population already dead, researchers estimate that in 20 years, the rest of the colony will be completely wiped out. “The ones that we saw at Cape Denison were incredibly docile, lethargic, nearly unaware of your existence”.

Fast ice is sea ice which forms and stays fast along the coast.

Chris Turney, a climate change expert at the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, who has been studying the penguin colony, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the colony is dying out because the penguins are trapped on land and unable to migrate.

“The ones that are surviving are clearly struggling”, Turney said. Even then the overall population of Adelie penguins is doing well despite the sudden population decrease in Cape Denison.

The penguins of Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay used to live close to a large body of open water.

“Our results have important implications for wider East Antarctic if the current increasing sea ice trend continues”, they add.

And, as long as that’s the case, attempts by the Adelie penguins to breed and thrive in Commonwealth Bay will likely continue to fail.