Water samples taken from Cornwall beauty spot's brown sea

Water has been taken from a Cornish beauty spot beach to be analysed after it was filmed with a brown slick on it.

A video of the slick on Sunday, at Trevaunance Cove near St Agnes, showed a section of the sea had turned brown, and sewage smells were reported.

Samples have been taken by South West Water (SWW), which previously said a storm overflow was "triggered briefly".

The Environment Agency said such test results normally took "several days".

Water at the cove was pictured still looking brown on Tuesday

Earlier this week, local lifeguard Joel Henthorn said: "The water was grey and frothing and smelled of sewage."

SWW said the storm overflow was "triggered briefly following heavy rain".

Storm overflows are designed to release excess storm water into rivers and seas when a prolonged rainfall occurs to prevent the risk of sewage backing up and flooding homes.

SWW said: "This was a short duration spill and is unlikely to have caused the level of discolouration shown in the video.

"On this occasion, we believe there were other factors which contributed to the discolouration, such as mud in the water dislodged by the heavy rain flowing into the area from a nearby stream and run off from agricultural land."

The Environment Agency said: "In the event of an incident South West Water generally undertakes both field testing to give an indication of water quality and also laboratory analysis.

"Field testing would be undertaken on the day but laboratory analysis takes longer - normally several days.

"We do not have this data yet although it has been requested."