A jumble of island officials and resident volunteers are shaving troubles saving tens of thousands of Northern Rockhopper penguins threatened by an oil spill in the stretches of the south Atlantic, about 1,500 miles west of Cape Town, South Africa.

A cargo ship leaked thousands of heavy oil, soya bean and diesel fuel near Nightingale Island. At least 300 penguins have died.

"I've seen about 15 to 20 dead penguins just today," director Trevor Glass said.

"The danger now is getting the rest of these penguins past that oil slick," Glass said.

The rescue had begun March 16, when the M.S. Oliva, a Maltese, registered ship, ran aground, fracturing the vessel in two.

The ship was heading from Santos, Brazil, to Singapore and had been carrying 60,000 metric tons of soya beans and 1,500 metric tons of heavy fuel, according to islands' administrator Sean Burns and Transport Malta, the Maltese shipping authority.

The ship was heading from Santos, Brazil, up to Singapore. There was 60,000 metric tons of soya beans and 1,500 metric tons of heavy fuel.

The agency said in a statement that it "is investigating the grounding and subsequent complete hull failure" of the bulk carrier cargo ship.

There were 22 crew members that were on video during the dramatic rescue. It also showed penguins soaked in heavy oil.

The people who shot by an expedition team from eco-tourism ship.  While filming them camera men used inflatable boats to help carry the sailors back to safety.

Currently an oil sheen has been surrounding a chain around the island. Many officials say this could lead to a disaster in the environment.

            While using inflatable watercraft and fishing vessels, they are taking penguins to rehabilitation centers at the main island of Tristan da Cuhua.

Conservationists and volunteers are working in an effort to nurse the blackened penguins back to health.

"We need help," said Katrine Herian, a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds who is also apart of the ongoing rescue effort.

"The priority is to get food into the birds as they are very hungry," she said. "We are trying locally caught fish and some are starting to take small half-inch squares of the food."

Someone noted that some of the islands' residents had emptied their personal freezers in an effort to help feed the animals.

By Friday, A team had corralled and transported a total of nearly 5,000 penguins, during horrible winds and high seas that had played with the earlier rescue attempts.

Their timing when they were there became risky.

The shipwreck, having come at the end of the birds' molting season, this is a period during which penguins shed their feathers, do not eat and largely stay out of the water,  left the birds "at their weakest possible state," Guggenheim explained. "They're very hungry."

Less than 300 people currently live on the island chain, next to the its massive penguin population, estimated at 150,000, which makes about 40 percent of the world's total.

It is amazing how they have saved so many penguins and that they won’t be in harm any more. But for all the ones that died they should have prevented this from happening and checked their cargo before they had left their ports. Thankfully the men and women who have been trying their hardest to save every penguin they could they were able to save so many. Now we are able to see penguins not harmed. Now 5,000 penguins are saved.