A major spill of heavy crude oil from a wrecked freighter has coated an estimated 20,000 highly endangered penguins on a remote South Atlantic island chain, local authorities and environmental groups said Tuesday.
More than 800 tons of fuel oil has leaked from the Maltese-registered ship, which ran aground early March 16 on Nightingale Island, part of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, a British territory, local officials said.
The ship has broken in half, and an additional 800 tons of fuel oil was believed to be leaking from the front section of the hull, said a spokeswoman with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a British-based conservation group monitoring the situation.
Conservation groups said the wreck could pose a different ecological threat to the island chain as rats could have come ashore from the vessel.
Several islands in the archipelago are rodent-free, and a rat infestation could potentially do more harm to bird life than any oiling, experts said.
