At least 40% of the world's African penguin population are imperiled by an oil spill off the coast of South Africa that continues to spread, conservation officials said yesterday. Rescuers are trying to rescue as many of the 55,000 penguins on Dassen Island and the 19,000 on Robben Island as they can.
     "This evacuation is the biggest-ever effort to save seabirds worldwide," said Horst Kleinschmidt, a senior official in South Africa's environment department. There are estimated to be between 150,000 and 180,000 African penguins worldwide (Mike Cohen, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 Jun).
     A Panamanian-owned ship went down 23 June carrying 1,300 tons of bunker oil and 90 tons of gas oil. Experts predicted Tuesday that the cleanup will last at least two more weeks, and that the ecological damage could get worse (Mike Cohen, AP/San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner online, 27 Jun).
     Although the ship was carrying 1,300 tons of fuel oil, officials say most of it remained contained in the vessel's tanks. The 17-year-old ship was heading from China to Brazil with a load of iron ore and sank when a hole developed in its aging hull (Mike Cohen, AP/San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner online, 25 Jun).
     Dassen Island holds the largest colony of African penguins in the world, while Robben Island is the home of the third-largest community. "At least 20,000 penguins have been oiled," said Estelle van der Merwe, of the Southern African National Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. "It's really devastating, what's happened."
     Officials are still trying to tell how the spill will affect bird populations north of Dassen, Kleinschmidt said.
     More than 10,000 soiled penguins have been taken to the foundation's rehabilitation centers to be cleaned, while about 50 birds have died, with more casualties expected. During the mass evacuation of the birds, authorities will take them about 560 miles east to Port Elizabeth and release them into the ocean. It will then take the penguins 11 days to swim home, and by then authorities hope to have the spill cleaned up (Cohen, AP/Philadelphia Inquirer).