If you were thinking of visiting Spain’s beautiful north western coast, your walks along the beach may be spoilt and it may be an idea not to order locally caught fish. A 35m gash in the side of a Greek owned oil tanker, the Prestige, has caused a major oil spill, about 1,500 tonnes of oil so far.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warns that if all 77,000 tones of the Prestige's cargo were to leak, the spill would be twice the size of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska.

Floating barriers and pumping systems have been in place to try to contain the spill, but nonetheless, thick patches of oil have been washing up along a 40-kilometre stretch of coastline.