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It was a rather ghastly sight on the beach of Whittier, a western Prince William Sound town in early January. Biologist David Irons found hundreds of dead birds on the shore. Most probably due to the ecosystem getting "tattered" by the strange, warm sea water, according to WCVB. The dead birds looked to have met their fate by starvation and were lined up along the shore where the tide had left them.

"We have never found close to 8,000 birds on a 1-mile long beach before," Irons said. "It is an order of magnitude larger than any records that I am aware of."

Since it happened, a colleague biologist, Tamara Zeller, boated in Prince William Sound to seek more "dead or sick murres". She has also counted and recorded the number of dead birds.

On Jan. 7, she counted 98 birds on the water and 284 on the shore. And finally, she arrived at a staggering figure of 3,000 at the end of the day.

Another biologist at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, Heather Renner, agrees that the die-off is part of a bigger event going past Whittier, estimating that about 100,000 common murres have died in a similar manner.

"It's hard to know how many birds have died because Alaska is so big, and there are so many remote areas," Renner said.

Examining 100 carcasses made the team realise that the reason for the death was most probably emaciation, perhaps due to lack of adequate food supply.

However, it is not likely that there will be a major dent on the seawater population. "Seabird biologists say seabirds are indicators of the health of the ecosystem," Irons said. "Now they're dying and that is telling us something. We should be aware of that. If we don't record they're dying it goes unnoticed."

It is not completely clear as to why the birds are dying, although the warm waters are said to be one reason for it.