Penguins can’t get enough to eat

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When one of South Africa’s worst environmental disasters unfolded 21 years ago, Lauren Waller made her way to the Salt River warehouse in Cape Town, donned rubber gloves and volunteered to help rehabilitate 19 000 oil-soaked African penguins. 

It was June 2000 and the MV Treasure, a bulk iron ore carrier, had sunk between two key breeding islands for African penguins, Robben Island in Table Bay and Dassen Island near Cape Town, spilling 400 tonnes of bunker oil into the sea. 

Now there is a new alarm bell ringing. Endangered African penguins are being pushed to the brink of extinction by food scarcity, oil spills, extreme weather, predation, sub-optimal breeding habitats and disease, according to scientists and various organisations.

The charismatic seabirds, which are slow to breed and long-lived, are “gasping for air”, says Waller, the Leiden conservation fellow for the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob). “There’re less birds in the wild today than were affected by the Treasure.” Around 40 000 were affected by the oil spill.