NPT head named to Sargasso Sea Commission

National Parks Trust Director Cassander Titley-O’Neal has been tipped to serve on an international body that works to protect a vast area of the Atlantic Ocean north of the Virgin Islands.

On Jan. 7, the Bermuda government appointed Ms. Titley-O’Neal a commissioner of the Sargasso Sea Commission, a body of independent experts who serve three-year terms with responsibility for overseeing the stewardship, conservation and resilience of the Sargasso Sea.

“I am very pleased to have been appointed to this commission,” she said. “I look forward to beginning work, sharing my expertise and learning from my colleagues to achieve the commission’s goals.”

Ms. Titley-O’Neal was appointed under the 2014 Hamilton Declaration, an international agreement that created the commission after about two years of negotiations among governments with interests in the sea.

The agreement was initially signed by the governments of the Azores, Bermuda, Monaco, the United Kingdom and the United States. They were later joined by the VI, which signed in 2016, as well as the Bahamas, Canada, the Cayman Islands and the Dominican Republic.

The Sargasso Sea, which stretches across about two million square miles in the northern Atlantic Ocean, is bounded by four currents that form a massive gyre north of the Caribbean and east of the mainland US.

Much of it lies on the high seas outside the jurisdiction of any nation. The commission, whose secretariat is based in Bermuda, advocates on the global stage for the area’s protection.

Still leading the NPT

Ms. Titley-O’Neal enters her first three-year term on the commission while continuing to oversee operations of the NPT, which manages 21 national parks across the territory.

In that position, her work includes balancing conservation, protection and sustainable management with the economic demands of tourism, according to government.

An environmental consultant with more than 16 years of experience, Ms. Titley-O’Neal specialises in ecotoxicology. Her research — which has focused on the effects of harmful substances in the environment, including endocrine disruption in female marine gastropods — has been published in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, Science of the Total Environment, Bulletin of Marine Science and Water Quality Research Journal of Canada, government stated.

In 2019, she contributed to the territory’s National Physical Development Plan, which has since been ratified by the Planning Authority.

Regionally, she served as a specialist for the Caribbean Regional Oceanscape Project, leading the development of five marine spatial plans for St. Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada, as well as a regional framework, according to government.

She holds a Ph.D. in marine biology from the University of New Brunswick; a master’s degree in applied marine science from the University of Plymouth; and a bachelor’s degree in marine biology with a minor in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, government stated.