Responders to a shipwreck and oil spill off a remote South Atlantic archipelago are in a “race against time” to save thousands of endangered penguins that have been coated in crude, local officials said Thursday.

Hundreds of oiled-soaked rockhopper penguins have been recovered from Nightingale Island, part of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, where a large freighter ran aground last week, spilling roughly 1,600 tons of heavy fuel oil into the surrounding waters, Sean Burns, the islands’ administrator, said in a statement.

The birds have been collected and transferred to the archipelago’s main island, but rehabilitation efforts have been hampered by a lack of cleaning supplies and equipment, Mr. Burns said. Only one response ship has arrived on the scene from South Africa, and the departure of a second, better-equipped ship has not yet been confirmed.

Tristan da Cunha, a British territory, is one of the most isolated archipelagos in the world and the journey by sea takes between four to six days. The islands have no airport.



“A crucial next step is to confirm a second vessel to depart from Cape Town in the next few days with all the necessary equipment and supplies to clean up the birds, keep them healthy and hopefully return them to the ocean,” Mr. Burns said.

“It will be a race against time,” he said.

John Cooper, an information officer for a conservation group monitoring the situation, said the captured penguins could not be fed until a shipment of frozen fish arrived on the second response vessel.

Andrew Gurr, governor of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, said in a statement that the Tristan government “is committed to ensuring that the ship’s owners will meet the full cost of any clean-up, damage or subsequent losses arising from the situation.”

A wildlife expert on the scene suggested this week that as many as 20,000 rockhopper penguins across several islands may have been affected by oil, but those numbers remain a preliminary estimate and have not been confirmed. Island officials and a wildlife organization participating in the clean-up did not respond to a request for comment on the situation.

Other species have also been oiled, including giant petrels and fur seal pups, though the penguins seem to be the primary victims of the spill.

The rockhopper penguin is listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and roughly 40 percent of the known population is found on the Tristan da Cunha archipelago.

The heavy oil slick once observed to be surrounding Nightingale Island appears to have significantly dissipated, potentially lowering the risk for extensive additional oiling of wildlife, observers said. Most of the oil within the wrecked vessel, the MS Oliva, also appears to have already have entered the sea.

Globules of crude and patches of diesel continue to be observed floating on the water and on the islands’ beaches, however, and responders are working to keep penguins and other wildlife from entering the water.

Andrew Evans, a correspondent with National Geographic, captured the devastation in a story, video and photographs posted online.

“Ecological disaster is not the story I wanted to send from this place, but it’s the one that is happening here right now,” Mr. Evans wrote.

“It was a painful and disturbing scene,” he said. “My only consolation is that the people of Tristan take their birds very seriously and the entire island is contributing to the rescue efforts.”