One of the best-known types of pollution - the sort that we all hear about - is when an oil tanker runs onto the rocks. These huge ships can carry hundreds of thousands of tons of oil. Almost every year, somewhere a tanker runs aground and the oil flows out into the sea, doing terrible damage to all the creatures that live in that area. Thousands of my beautiful seabird friends get covered in black oil and die of poisoning or starvation. More damage is done along the shoreline and under the sea. The area takes many years to recover. All so you can drive about in cars... You don't hear so often about the spills on land when pipelines break - or are blown up in wars.