Hazel Oxenford

University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados | UWI · Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES)

The recent proliferation of pelagic Sargassum spp. in the Tropical Atlantic causes major ecological and socioeconomic impacts to the wider Caribbean when it washes ashore, with regional fisheries and tourism industries particularly affected. The Caribbean influxes have been tracked to a new bloom region known as the North Equatorial Recirculation R...

Proliferation of sargassum across the tropical Atlantic since 2011 has motivated a range of forecasting methods. Statistical methods based on basin-scale satellite data are used to address seasonal timescales. Other methods involve explicit Lagrangian calculations of trajectories for particles that are representative of drifting sargassum over days...

Since 2011, unprecedented pelagic sargassum seaweed blooms have occurred across the tropical North Atlantic, with severe socioeconomic impacts for coastal populations. To investigate the role of physical drivers in post-2010 sargassum blooms in the Central West Atlantic (CWA), conditions are examined across the wider tropical North Atlantic, using...

The Caribbean Sea is reported to have one of the highest levels of plastic pollution of any marine ecosystem. Much less is known about the levels of microplastics as an emerging pollutant in the marine environment, especially in the water column and benthic substrates where they can be easily ingested by marine organisms. This study was carried out...

Chapter 12. Status and trends of coral reefs of the Caribbean region, pp. 1-25. In: Souter, D., Planes, S., Wicquart, J., Logan, M., Obura, D., & Staub, F. (Eds.) Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2020. Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, International Coral Reef Iniciative, Australian Institute of Marine Science, & Australian Governement.

This Sargassum Monitoring Protocol (SMP) provides the basis for a standardised protocol for visualising and estimating the abundance of freshly beached sargassum. This simple protocol uses a combination of ‘off-the-shelf’ drone technology, rapid field measurements and automated geospatial analysis tools, developed specifically for use within the Ca...

The holopelagic macroalgae sargassum has proliferated across the tropical Atlantic since 2011, of consequence for coastal populations from West Africa to the Caribbean with limited early warning of major beaching events. As part of an interdisciplinary project, ‘Teleconnected SARgassum risks across the Atlantic: building capacity for TRansformation...

Over the last decade, the Caribbean has seen massive, episodic influxes of pelagic sargassum negatively impacting coastal ecosystems, people’s livelihoods and climate-sensitive sectors. Addressing this issue solely as a hazard has proven extremely costly and attention is slowly turning towards the potential opportunities for sargassum reuse and val...

In 2011 unprecedented massive influxes of pelagic sargassum seaweed took the Caribbean completely by surprise. The floating sargassum disrupted fishing operations, impacted fish catches, and caused significant hardship to fisherfolk. Stranded sargassum covered beaches and the rotting weed produced pungent smells threatening tourism and invoking dif...

Concluding chapter of this multiauthored book

Over small spatial scales, coral reefs represent a mosaic of suitable settlement microhabitat patches of varying size for late-stage larval reef fishes. Few studies have specifically examined how variation in patch size influences density of recently settled coral reef fishes (recruits). Using standardized units of coral rubble settlement substrate...

Monitoring the state of coral reefs is necessary to identify drivers of change and assess effectiveness of management actions. There are several widely-used survey methods, each of which is likely to exhibit different biases that should be quantified if the purpose is to combine datasets obtained via different survey methods. The latter is a partic...

Seawater quality is critical for island and coastal communities dependent on coastal tourism. Improper management of coastal development and inland watersheds can decrease seawater quality and adversely impact marine life, human health, and economic growth. Agricultural runoff and improper sewage management compromise nearshore water quality in man...

Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity (CARICOMP) was a basin-wide cooperative, international network of marine laboratories established in 1985. Recognizing major trends of change in coastal ecosystems and the importance of the linkages among them, our goal was to monitor synoptically with standardized methods the physical environment and to docume...

The common dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) is an epipelagic, mid-trophic level, highly migratory species distributed throughout the world’s tropical and subtropical oceans in waters greater than 20�C. Life-history variables, migratory behaviour, and genetic markers have been used to define major stocks in the central Atlantic Ocean and Mediterran...

This is a correction to: ICES Journal of Marine Science, fsy174, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsy174

A critical component of any fishery is its economic viability, and understanding the underlying socioeconomic factors that affect fishing activity and profitability allows for more informed management. Nevertheless, data on small-scale fisheries in the Caribbean are limited, potentially inhibiting informed and appropriately scaled policy implementa...

The common dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) is an epipelagic, mid-trophic level, highly migratory species distributed throughout the world's tropical and subtropical oceans in waters greater than 20 C. Life-history variables, migratory behaviour, and genetic markers have been used to define major stocks in the central Atlantic Ocean and Mediterran...

Human development and dense populations along coastal zones impact the health of coastal and marine ecosystems, which is detrimental to the economic sustainability of tourism. Visitors to Barbados are primarily attracted to the country's coastal and marine resources, making the protection of the marine environment paramount. In developing countries...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0188564.].

Coastal ecosystems and the livelihoods they support are threatened by stressors acting at global and local scales. Here we used the data produced by the Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity program (CARICOMP), the longest, largest monitoring program in the wider Caribbean, to evidence local-scale (decreases in water quality) and global-scale (incr...

Mixed effect models results. Word file including non-linear mixed effect model fits for temperature and visibility. (DOCX)

Site metadata. Word file including metadata for all CARICOMP stations included in the database and mixed effect model fits for temperature and visibility. (DOCX)

CARICOMP environmental database. Text file including all CARICOMP’s weekly environmental data. (TXT)

Data scarcity in small-scale fisheries hinders the effective management of marine resources. This is particularly true within small island developing states that often have limited capacity for monitoring activities that could inform policy decisions. This study estimates the spatial distribution of fishing activity in the data-poor nearshore reef...

Given the current degradation of Caribbean coral reefs, considerable regional emphasis has been put into monitoring the state of key exploited reef fish herbivores, namely surgeonfishes and parrotfishes, through underwater visual fish surveys (UVFS). However, like all survey methods, UVFS suffer from sampling errors that could mask real spatio-temp...

Executive Summary The greater Caribbean biogeographic region covered in this report (representing 38 countries and territories) encompasses an outstanding marine bony shorefish richness of approximately 1,360 species, with many (53%) being endemic. While information on the conservation status of greater Caribbean seagrasses, mangrove, reef-building...

The commercially important fish and shellfish of Caribbean SIDS have been considered in four groups based on environment and following the typical division of fishery groups used in this region. There is a dearth of research and long-term datasets on the impacts of climate change on Caribbean marine environments and the important fishery resources....

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Based on the current observations and climate projections for this region, and knowledge garnered mostly from other tropical regions, it is clear that the fishery sector of Caribbean SIDS is highly vulnerable to climate change. Reductions in fish and shellfish fishery catches in Caribbean SIDS can be expected to have significant s...

Global warming is seen as one of the greatest threats to the world's coral reefs, and with the continued rise in sea surface temperature predicted into the future, there is a great need for further understanding of how to prevent and address the damaging impacts. This is particularly so for countries whose economies depend heavily on healthy reefs,...

Supplementary information

Raw data for coral bleaching and mortality Raw data showing the number of coral colonies per transect per reef per period that were bleached or affected by tissue mortality.

There is an urgent need to develop simple indicators of fishing effects for the implementation of ecosystem-based fisheries management in the Caribbean. In this study, we compare the ability of three simple metrics (average individual fish weight, fish density, and fish biomass) derived from the parrotfish assemblage and from an assemblage of highl...

Queen conch, Strombus gigas (Linnaeus, 1758), is a species of significant economic importance in the Caribbean Sea, exploited mainly for consumption by a ravenous export market in the USA and French West Indies. Because populations have been depleted throughout the Caribbean region by overfishing, present conservation efforts are focused on regiona...

Fish community metrics have been extensively investigated as indicators of fishing effects for ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) in temperate systems. Little similar work has been performed in the coral reefs of the Caribbean, where simple indicators are urgently needed. Here, we use 415 coral reef-surveys throughout the Caribbean to asse...

The types of marine benthic habitats utilised by hawksbill sea turtles Eretmochelys imbricata nesting at Needham’s Point, Barbados, were investigated using an underwater drop camera. Habitats used preferentially (i.e. those within high-use areas) tended to be high relief and densely covered with biota, characterised by high abundance of hard corals...

The CARICOMP monitoring network gathered standardized data from 52 seagrass sampling stations at 22 sites (mostly Thalassia testudinum-dominated beds in reef systems) across the Wider Caribbean twice a year over the period 1993 to 2007 (and in some cases up to 2012). Wide variations in community total biomass (285 to .2000 g dry m 22) and annual fo...

The CARICOMP monitoring network gathered standardized data from 52 seagrass sampling stations at 22 sites (mostly Thalassia testudinum-dominated beds in reef systems) across the Wider Caribbean twice a year over the period 1993 to 2007 (and in some cases up to 2012). Wide variations in community total biomass (285 to >2000 g dry m-2) and annual fol...

Increasing interest in implementing an ecosystem-based management approach has made stakeholder involvement vital and has highlighted the need for an effective participatory framework. In this study we used a participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) framework to collaboratively map the marine resources of the transboundary Grenadine Isla...

There is great need to identify simple yet reliable indicators of fishing effects within the multi-species, multi-gear, data-poor fisheries of the Caribbean. Here, we investigate links between fishing pressure and three simple fish metrics, i.e. average fish weight (an estimate of average individual fish size), fish density and fish biomass, derive...

Increasing interest in implementing ecosystem-based management approaches has made stakeholder involvement vital and has highlighted the need for an effective participatory framework. In this case study of the transboundary Grenadine Islands, we illustrate how the application of a participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) approach was suc...

The use of natural resources and the services they provide often do not have an explicit price and are therefore undervalued in decision-making, leading to environmental degradation. To 'monetize' the benefits from these services requires the use of non-market valuation techniques. Using a stated preference survey of recreational divers in Barbados...

Queen conch (Strombus gigas Linnaeus, 1758) populations in Barbados support a small-scale unregulated fishery and government efforts are now underway to improve knowledge about the status of this valuable resource. In the present study, we contribute to these efforts by performing the first rigorous underwater assessment of queen conch on the shall...

p>In order to ensure sustainable use of their shared marine resources, the nations of the West Caribbean Region must adopt an approach that encompasses both the human and natural dimensions of ecosystems. This volume directly contributes to that vision, bringing together the collective knowledge and experience of scholars and practitioners within t...

The first standardized, global assessment of these fishes, using Red List criteria, reveals threatened species needing protection.

The rising temperature of the world's oceans has become a major threat to coral reefs globally as the severity and frequency of mass coral bleaching and mortality events increase. In 2005, high ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean resulted in the most severe bleaching event ever recorded in the basin. Satellite-based tools prov...

Sea surface temperature during the 2005 Caribbean bleaching event. Sea surface temperature (SST) averaged across the 0.5-degree pixels that contained or were nearest Caribbean reef locations (bounded by 35°N, 55°W, 5°N and the coast of the Americas). The ‘+’ symbols indicate the average climatological temperature during each month and the dashed li...

Complete data record for all survey data used in the analyses. Multiple observations from the same reef site, date and depth (±5 m) were combined as either means of percent cover data or proportion of the number of colonies surveyed to provide 2575 bleaching surveys and 1077 mortality surveys. (0.17 MB PDF)

Animation of the development of thermal stress during the 2005 Caribbean bleaching event, measured using NOAA Coral Reef Watch Degree Heating Week product from 4 June 2005 to 14 February 2006 with a pause during the peak of the event at 28 October 2005. (5.54 MB TIF)

Comparison of bleaching survey methods. All observations of percent coral colonies (gray circles) and cover (black diamonds) are plotted versus observed Degree Heating Week (DHW). Linear regressions for colonies (gray line) and cover (black line) were highly significant (cover slope = 3.91, intercept = 19.99, df = 212, p<0.0001, r2 = 0.26; colonies...

Locations of 2575 bleaching surveys submitted from sites across the greater Caribbean region. Colors denote number of surveys at each of the 1212 sites. See Table S1 for location details. (0.18 MB TIF)

Dinoflagellates in the genus Symbiodinium are among the most abundant and important group of eukaryotic microbes found in coral reef ecosystems. Recent analyses conducted on various host cnidarians indicated that Symbiodinium assemblages in the Caribbean Sea are genetically and ecologically diverse. In order to further characterize this diversity a...