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Landlocked Iceberg Kills 150,000 Penguins And Threatens To Wipe Out Colony

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Feb 15, 2016 02:12 AM EST

The Adelie penguin family residing in Antarctica recently got "landlocked" by a massive iceberg, which killed about 150,000 of the population in the past six years, according to CNN.

Called B09B, the iceberg is almost 1,120 square miles. It ran into the penguin habitat at Cape Denison in 2010, forcing the family to waddle across 40 miles of deserted land before it could locate food. Iceberg B09B was floating near the coast for two decades before it crashed into a glacier and got stuck in 2010.

Worryingly, the colony's mortality rate shot up, as just a fraction of the original 160,000 population is still live, said The Express Tribune.

While the colony is landlocked, scientists fear that the sea ice needs to break up and become dislodged so that the penguins find a way out. Otherwise, the Cape Denison colony will not survive for more than two decades.

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