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while you can see the floating waste, you cannot see the germs that have also been washed back up onto the beach.
Oil pollution
One of the greatest dangers to beaches, and ocean wildlife, is pollution by oil. If a ship releases oil at sea, or a storm pushes a ship against rocks or on a beach and damages it, then millions of litres of oil can be released (picture 3).
Some oil floats and makes a film called an oil slick. An oil slick seals the water so that no air can get into it. This can kill beach life. When birds wade in the water, or swim on the surface, they get covered with oil. As
 3 When a pipeline or an oil tanker is holed, the waves carry some of the oil on the surface, while currents carry other parts across the sea bed. As a result, oil pollution is very difficult to deal with.
they hunt for food in the sand, they eat the oil. Oil is a poison. Many birds and countless creatures living in the beach sand may die when there is an oil spill.
Some oil forms into tar balls. It sinks
to the bottom and is then rolled back and forth by the waves. Tar balls may wash up on beaches for months or years after a spill.
Cleaning up
When a disaster happens, many people try their best to collect and clean up the beach and rocks, and to rescue and clean the wildlife. But most wildlife caught in an oil spill still dies.
Oil slicks cause a lot of damage, and are very expensive to clean up. This is the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, Alaska.
The Deepwater Horizon pipeline rupture in the Gulf of Mexico 2010, proved very difficult to deal with.
Ship holed
Beach
How soil comes ashore when a tanker is damaged just off the coast.
Oil slick
Tar balls
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