ABSTRACTConcern over loss of shore property and local deterioration of the physical condition of beaches on the west coast of Barbados has led to extended analysis of the coastal subsystems. The main features of the west coast are inherited from events associated with complex sea-level fluctuations and extension of coral terraces in the Quaternary. The contemporary coast was established at the close of the Flandrian transgression along an early Wisconsin rocky shoreline. Introduction of sand into the shore system from cliff erosion (2 to 10 m retreat during the period), reef destruction and terrestrial sources has formed a sand beach that has moved seawards with time leaving a narrow sand terrace between the shore and the earlier coastline. Nineteen beach cells were identified along the west coast and intensive studies of wave and current processes leading to changes in beach planform and profile were made at two (Gibbs and Sandy Lane bays). Whilst the volume-shape mechanism operating through an annual cycle leaves a beach cell in quasi-equilibrium, overall loss of beach sand in the past 13 years has been accompanied by a 45 % linear increase of exposed beach rock.