A little over a century ago, Commonwealth Bay in Antarctica is home to possible overestimated 200,000 birds. Now, the number of Adélie penguins are getting smaller and smaller after a vast iceberg appeared.

The emergence of this huge iceberg suddenly changed the settings for the birds. This drastic change affected the penguins' living because the ice sheet that changed the terrain made it harder for the birds to get food. The said changes on the environment made the penguins swim more than 60 kilometers to get to open water and catch fish.

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According to Gizmodo, the death of 150,000 of penguins was not caused by the arrival of the gigantic iceberg. In fact, a research made in 2011 shows that there are 12,834 pairs of penguins in the area, and two years later, it went down to 5,520. There is a possibility that as of today, the number of penguins inhabiting the Commonwealth Bay may be lesser than 5,000.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales' Climate Change Research Center, in partnership with New Zealand's West Coast Penguin Trust, stated that the penguins in B09B may be eradicated in a span of 20 years. As stated on their research, the continual fast ice that is forming in Cape Denison is one of the big factors of a suspected elimination of the birds. A notable factor in the census performed last December 2013, there are hundreds of birds' eggs being abandoned and muddled with long-been frozen carcasses of previous hatched chicks.

Researchers claim that the study they did has significant connotation across East Antarctic, if the fast sea ice formation sustained. The Antarctic Sea ice is vastly manipulated by the changes in location and wind directions, unlike the Arctic Ocean where global warming is happening added the scientists. While Antarctic sea is having persistent ice growth, the Arctic is experiencing how extreme the effect of global warming is. It is where several glaciers shrivel and ice is slowly liquefying, 9News Au reported.

On a lighter note, penguins that are living on the eastern edge of Commonwealth Bay shows abundance and seem to not affected by the condition of the other side of the bay.