Bath 2015-i

NAVIGATION
This page is a sub-page Historical Imagery, that in turn
a subpage of ObsBath, a top-level page on
the website Barbados Fringing Reefs and Seagrass Beds (www.versicolor.ca/barbados).
Go to ObsBath for a list of other subpages in this section
of the website.

“Huge boulders of Pleistocene limestone, the work of long dead corals, take a battering in the breaker zone”.

Subpages of Historical Imagery
– Bath 1968-70
– Bath 1994
– Bath 2005
– Bath 2011-i
– Bath 2011-ii
– Bath 2015-i (This Page)
– Bath 2015-ii
– Bath 2015-iii
– Bath 2017
– Bath 2024/5

DRAFTING…

Compared to 2011 and earlier visits to Bath (2005, 1994, 1968-70), in 2015, the seagrasses Thalassia testudinum and Syringodium filiforme were much more sparse and shorter, and the Avarianvilla* cover more extensive and more dense, seemingly “choking out” T. testudinum; where seagrasses occurred with sparse or no co-occurrence of Avrianvillea, there was a lot of erosion and exposure of rhizomes.

It appeared that a successional sequence driven by positive feedback between substrate stability and substrate-stabilizing seagrasses and algae, inferred in 1969, was going to completion over a large swaths of the lagoon:

Loose Substrate–>Colonization by S. filiforme-->Colonization by T. testudinum–>Exclusion of S. filiforme & new colonization by Avrainvillea spp–>”Pure” Avrainvillea spp (and other alage, corals etc) climax

The climax, “pure” Avrainvillea communities seemed to be much more resistant than the seagrass communities to strong wave disturbance; wave disturbance in the lagoon had increased from previous years, attributable to erosion of big emergent rocks in The Platform area, hardscaping of the shoreline and climate change.
*“Avrainvillea” at Bath refers to two species or species groups: A.rawsonii and A. nigricans