Cape Town | Tuesday
CONSERVATIONISTS on Monday said only 7% of the thousands of penguins oiled after a carrier ship sank off South Africa a year ago, have been seen breeding again, indicating that spills might make the birds sterile.
About 33% of those who were clean but were evacuated to swim back are breeding” said Anton Wolfaardt, the reserve manager for Cape Nature Conservation on Dassen Island.
Wolfaardt said this suggested the clean penguins fared much better at breeding than those that were washed in a mammoth cleaning operation on the mainland.
But Wolfaardt said, of both oiled and clean penguins: “We are worried that the oil might have a negative impact on their reproductive organs.”
Nearly 40_000 penguins were taken off Dassen Island and Robben Island two small islands off Cape Town that are home to nearly half of the world’s African penguins in June 2000 after an ore carrier sank and leaked more than 1_000 tonnes of oil.
About half these penguins were clean but were taken off the islands and released some 800 kilometres away in Port Elizabeth to swim back over a couple weeks while the islands were cleaned.
Wolfaardt said it was normal for penguins to struggle to breed shortly after a spill as their “whole cycle goes out of sync for a little while.”
“Penguins are monogamous, so if their mates have died in the spill or have not come back (to the islands), they have to start all over again.”
But while these difficulties may only last one season, he said, some penguins had still not resumed breeding seven years after the Apollo Sea tanker caused a massive spill off Cape Town.
Tony Williams from the South African National Coalition for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob) said between 30% and 40% of the penguins that were rescued, cleaned and ringed after the Apollo Sea sank were not breeding.
“We don’t know why that is,” he said.
Wolfaardt said Cape Town conservationists would launch a joint study with the University of California to establish whether being polluted with oil could render penguins sterile. – AFP
ZA *NOW:
Evacuation of entire penguin colony underway July 2, 2000