150000 penguins killed after colossal iceberg in Antarctica leaves colony landlocked

 According to the census in December 2013, there were hundreds of abandoned eggs and the ground was beset with carcasses of previous season's chicks, freeze dried in the extreme cold.

The bay's Cape Denison was home to around 160,000 penguins, and the grounded iceberg cut them off from their ocean food supply.

A giant iceberg in the waters off Antarctica known as B09B is responsible for the deaths of almost 150,000 penguins in the Commonwealth Bay.

With iceberg B09B stuck in the Commonwealth Bay in East Antarctica, the only alternative access to the sea for the penguin colony involves a 60-kilometer trek.

The B09B iceberg is enormous and measures 38.6 square miles and it is grounded in Commonwealth Bay in East Antarctica in December 2010.

Arctic Penguins: How Do They Remain Ice-Free When Diving into Sub-Zero Waters? A century ago, the population of penguins in the region numbered around 100,000.

The penguins had to walk more than 60km (37 miles) to find food, impeding their breeding attempts.

"It's eerily silent now", Chris Turney, professor of climate change and earth sciences at UNSW in Australia and co-author of the study, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"The ones that we noticed at Cape Denison have been extremely docile, torpid, virtually unaware of your existence".

"The ones that are surviving are clearly struggling". They can barely survive themselves, not to mention hatch the subsequent era.

The Adélie penguin is classified as near-threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which says there are about 4.7 million of them in and around Antarctica. Scientists believe the growth in Antarctic sea ice is largely driven by changes in wind and local conditions. According to the team, their results have important implications for wider range studies if the current increasing sea ice continues.