In May a huge iceberg broke off from an Antarctic ice shelf, drifted, and came to a stop – right in front of “maybe the world’s unluckiest” penguins.
Like a door shutting, the iceberg’s huge walls sealed off the Halley Bay colony from the sea.
It seemed to spell the end for hundreds of newly-hatched fluffy chicks whose mothers, out hunting for food, may no longer have been able to reach them.
Then, a few weeks ago, the iceberg shifted and got on the move again.
Scientists have now discovered that the tenacious penguins found a way to beat the colossal iceberg – satellite pictures seen exclusively by BBC News this week show life in the colony.
But scientists endured a long, anxious wait until this point – and the chicks face another potentially deadly challenge in the coming months.
In August, when we asked the British Antarctic Survey if the emperor penguins had survived, they couldn’t tell us.
“We will not know until the sun comes up,” said scientist Peter Fretwell.
It was still Antarctic winter so satellites couldn’t penetrate the total darkness to take pictures of the birds.
This label of “maybe the world’s unluckiest penguins” comes from Peter, who has shared the penguins’ ups and downs for years.
These creatures teeter on the edge of life and death, and this was just the latest in a string of near-misses.
Teetering between life and death
It was once a stable colony and with 14,000 – 25,000 breeding pairs annually, the second biggest in the
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