The two most devastating effects of the Prestige oil spill were upon the wildlife and natural environment, on the one hand and upon the livelihoods of the Galician people, on the other Around 250 km of coastline was under threat from the oil spill and some 140 individual beaches became polluted. Over 15 000 seabirds were killed by the oil and many more times this figure were put in danger. Thousands of volunteers helped the emergency services in the clean-up operation, but the Spanish government was heavily criticised for its lack of action in the early days of the crisis and for misinformation. Worst hit were the Galician fisheries that employ about 21 000 people, mainly as small family operations with individual fishing boats and small crews, which had to be shut down overnight