These Adelies dive up to 400 feet, dodging giant ice floes the size of cars which bash around in the surf.

NPR: Penguins Helped and Hurt by Changing Climate

The stunning landscape is filled with frozen glaciers, icebergs and ice floes.

BBC: Life in the fragile, frozen Arctic

Nonetheless, computer modelling suggests a warming of the climate around Antarctica could result in the loss of more northern ice floes later this century.

BBC: Emperor penguins counted from space

It was 70 years ago, in 1937, that Ivan Papanin first landed on drifting ice floes and raised the Soviet flag over the North Pole-1 station.

ECONOMIST: Ventures into the near-abroad

But the sparse mostly Inuit populations dotted along the coastline find that ice floes are often so thin that hunters can no longer use dog sledges, reports say.

BBC: Mining question dominates Greenland poll

At a moment when nationalistic claims and counter-claims are resounding over the ice-floes, the region's intractability still forces its would-be conquerors to rub along.

ECONOMIST: The Arctic

When I sailed through the passage on a Canadian icebreaker, the Amundsen, in October that year, we encountered huge floes of thick ice.

BBC: The 'big melt' at the roof of the world

Satellites have long been used to track ice extent (area), but calculating the thickness of the marine floes requires the overflying spacecraft to gauge the difference between the top of the ice surface and the top of the water - a relatively simple calculation then gives the overall volume.

BBC: Launch success for Esa's Cryosat-2 ice mission

And given that the krill (tiny crustaceans) that penguins feed on are also dependent on the ice for their own existence (they feed on algae on the ice) - some colonies affected by eroded floes could face a double-whammy of high fledgling mortality and restricted food resources.

BBC: Emperor penguins counted from space