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.