Enviros and bird lovers are scrambling to rescue thousands of jackass penguins on Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, after a tanker carrying 1,300 tons of fuel oil sank nearby on Friday, causing a serious oil spill. About 2,000 oil-covered penguins have already been removed from the island and brought to the mainland for cleaning, and another 18,000 may follow, including 6,000 chicks that have recently hatched. Other species at risk from the spill include seals, cormorants, and gannets. Some news reports have indicated that the sunken ship is owned by Universal Pearls, the same Chinese company that owned another ship that went down off Cape Town’s coast in 1994 and caused extensive environmental damage.
