Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Chris Turney, leader of the ill fated 2013/14 Ship of fools expedition to the Antarctic, which got stuck in the global warming while trying to retrace the Mawson Expedition, has been urging people to listen to his expert knowledge of Penguin colonies.

More than 150,000 Adélie penguins have perished in a single colony in Antarctica after the grounding of a giant iceberg.

The penguins used to thrive at Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, where strong winds blowing off the ice sheet kept a large area of water open near the shore.

But in December 2010 an iceberg bigger than the ACT grounded in the bay, trapping floating sea ice near the coast. The penguins now have to make a round trip of more than 120km to feed in the sea and since 2011 the population has plummeted from 160,000 to just 10,000.

According to new research co-authored by the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre and published in the journal Antarctic Science, the colony could be wiped out within 20 years unless the sea ice breaks up or the iceberg, with an area of about 2900 square kilometres, moves.

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“Iceberg doesn’t really do it justice,” Professor Turney said. “It’s like a small country, it’s enormous.

“As the planet warms you’re going to get more ice melting. The reality is, more icebergs will be released from Antarctica and just embed themselves along the coastline, and make the travelling distances for some of these colonies even further than they have been.”

Adélie penguins usually return to the colony where they hatched and try to return to the same mate and nest. Professor Turney said the Cape Denison penguins could face a grim future. “They don’t migrate,” he said. “They’re stuck there. They’re dying.“