Thousands of penguins dead as iceberg cuts off colony’s food supply

Around 150,000 penguins have died after a large iceberg grounded near a colony of Adélie penguins in Antarctica, cutting off their food supply.  The iceberg B09B, which has an area of around 100 sq kilometres, grounded in the Bay in 2010. The colony must now travel more than 37 miles to its nearest food source. The iceberg, roughly the size of Rome, has caused the colony of Adelie penguins to dwindled to about 10,000, with no relief in sight. The colony was tracked and recorded as part of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, led by University of New South Wales Professor of Climate Change and Earth Sciences, Chris Turney. He said that particular colony has been recorded for more than 100 years and that researchers back then complained of the noise.
"It's eerily silent now," Turney said. "The ones that we saw at Cape Denison were incredibly docile, lethargic, almost unaware of your existence. The ones that are surviving are clearly struggling. They can barely survive themselves, let alone hatch the next generation. We saw lots of dead birds on the ground ... it's just heartbreaking to see."
Dr. Kerry-Jayne Wilson, of the West Coast Penguin Trust and co-author of the study, said the iceberg has totally changed the penguin habitat, leading to "catastrophic breeding failure". She said researchers were heartsick walking "amongst thousands of freeze-dried chicks from the previous season and hundreds of abandoned eggs".