Special Interest Glance
The birds — a species known as the common murre — likely died of starvation due to the warm water, which severely disrupted the birds' food supply.
Scientists say the mass die-off was unprecedented — both for murres, and across all bird species worldwide.
"The magnitude and scale of this failure has no precedent," said study lead author John Piatt, a research biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center, in a statement. "It was astonishing and alarming, and a red-flag warning about the tremendous impact sustained ocean warming can have on the marine ecosystem."
