SPAIN Rias Baixas -- 15/12/2002 -- Aerial view of an unidentified fishing town on the Galician coast.

SPAIN Rias Baixas -- 15/12/2002 -- Aerial view of an unidentified fishing town on the Galician coast. Galicia has a larger fleet of fishing boats than the rest of Europe put together. Now most of it is docked in hundreds of ports like this along the NW Spanish coast. Thousands of tonnes of heavy fuel oil has contaminated large swathes of the north-western coast of Spain after the tanker Prestige sank in late November 2002. The ship was carrying around 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil and while some has been extracted from the wreck, a lot of the oil has leaked into the sea causing a ecological disaster along much of the southern Atlantic coast of Europe. The cost of the disaster is estimated at over 20 billion Euros. Thousands of volunteers and military personnel are involved in the clean-up operation which could last for six months -- Picture © Jon Mitchell / Lightroom Photos