In the realm of Faerie, young men on the verge of valour tread through lands of legend to capture the heart of a falling star. Alas, like Gaiman's maiden of icy demeanour, the stellar finds of Singapore's shores are cold and hard to the touch, unwilling to dash off in wanton haste but also severely disinclined to warm up to dank and dirty ducks. With its tube feet extended in protest (some can be seen protruding from the split ends of the arms), this little biscuit sea star (Goniodiscaster scaber) endured but a minute on my soiled palm for a brief intercourse of record before it demanded a descent back onto its bed of sand. Said to be common in the meadows of Chek Jawa (though I have yet to see it there myself), this sun-shy asteroid appears to be carved from a cookie-cutter and sprinkled with granules of flavour. But the pale tubercles that dot its upper surface are probably pedicellariae that clear the skin from encrusting settlers that might otherwise be attracted to the organic extrusions of the animal's anal opening (which is visible in the photo above).
Saturday's outing to Beting Bronok (BB) was probably the earliest intertidal trip so far this season. So I fortified my constitution with a cup of kopi-o kau at the coffeeshop by the corner of Desker Road as Andy fuelled up before we headed for Changi. Along the seedier stretch of Aljunied Road, stalls of fresh fruit were still striving to outshine each other at two in the morning, their halide hoods drawing a likely horde of moths and men of nocturnal bent. On the long and at times fatal road south of the runway, a couple of boys (and a girl) in blue brought the car to a halt.
"Where are you going?"
"We are going to Changi Village."
"And why are you going to Changi Village?"
"err.... we are going for a nature walk."
Lovers of a certain nature were certainly out in full force at the car park fronting the ferry terminal, gazing at walkers in bewitching wear. One stroller lifted up her skirt to adjust something, revealing a slight bump in skintight tones. I hope it was not a case of 'salah-parking'...
The boat slid out to sea beneath a starless sky. The moon was in eclipse, leaving no shimmer to break the velvet sweep of almost still water in the straits. Behind us, a red haze of clouds shadow the island's shower of lights that shade the city from crime and the calm of a dark night. Every ten minutes or so, the landing lamps of early jets stream down from the northeast, bringing a new load of time-lagged sleepers.
A small bright spot on Ubin's eastern front marked the reopened House No. 1 that serves as the visitor centre to the Chek Jawa wetlands. We trace the northern coast of Tekong beyond the seawall until a point of triangulation is reached between a party ship with jolly masts and the peak of a Johorean mount.
Beting means 'sandbar' in Malay and that is just what Beting Bronok is: a sliver of sand and mud barely larger than a football field that lies exposed at the lowest tides. The boatman finds a landing site and from the prow, we climb down a sturdy ladder into knee-deep water and wade to a 'high' point to deposit our gear. The unleashed seabed seems largely featureless, switching from coarse sand to outright mud with little warning. Carpet anemones (Stichodactyla haddoni) are stationed with good regularity, their cores pulsating in shock at the sudden shift into dry air. My curious duck had a deathwish suffered a sudden urge for experiential discovery and poked a pink appendage at a small cluster of tentacles. I felt a near instant sensation of being vigorously sucked. My skin started to necrotise and turn a pallid green. To avert further damage to both parties, I retreated and applied a balm of saliva on the offended organ.
In the not too distant past, the sandbar was crawling with life. It was a garden of fans and whips in brilliant hues. Along with hard corals and sponges, a rich variety of sessile creatures formed an inmovable feast for slow predators such as sea urchins, sea stars and nudibranchs Ria's wildsingapore gallery showcases a gaudy array of fauna on BB, while in his book Singapore Splendour: Life On The Edge, Dr. Chua Ee Kiam recalls the sight of gangs of pencil sea urchins and 200-strong companies of knobbly sea stars. The intense run off of fresh water from the Johor River following the new year's uncharacteristic deluges are suspected to have smothered the reef's marine life with a fatal bath of osmotic shock as well as a heavy blanket of sediment. The shores of Chek Jawa and Sekudu are showing signs of recovery from the massive die-off that resulted in a corpse field of disintegrated echinoderms and ectoplasmic anemones. But BB's location in the line of fire, coupled with the possible effects of reclamation work along Tekong, seem to have delayed whatever recovery that might have occurred in the wake of the weather.
Still, the relatively barren flats recede at closer focus to unveil a still surprising lineup of living wonders. Seagrasses are absent for some reason, but clumps of parasol seaweed (Caulerpa peltata) cover parts of the seabed. Hard corals were missing save scattered colonies of unhappy favids, but we still found isolated blooms of flowery soft coral (Dendronephthya sp.) with broccoli-like clumps of pinkish polyps. Sadly, these may not be around for much longer, as warmer waters threaten to wreck even greater havoc on these uncalcified creatures compared to hard corals – and when they go, so will the worms, nudibranchs, shrimp, crabs and fish that dwell and feed on them, and in turn those others that feed on these. Stinging hydroids are still visible in the shallows and so my duck avoided the deeper fringes in morbid fear of painful darts. Unfortunately, in doing so, I wandered off tangent and missed the sight of a small depression. A single step forward led to a sudden sinking into a pool of grey. Luckily, a helpful monkey was nearby. Unfortunately, efforts to rescue my now-sordid duck resulted in a similar soaking for the simian. Only with much pleading agony and pledges of good behaviour did our feet feel solid ground once more. The mud was, however, no bane for the gong gong conches that crept around, cloaked in a coat of silt and peeking about with their beady little eyes.
A curious find on the substrate was a thing that looked as if was covered by a chainmail of petals. After a little kick prod it sort of unwound itself and started to move. Chay Hoon identified this creature as a slug called Polybranchia orientalis. Not a nudibranch but a sacoglossid in the same order as the green Elysia slugs that feed on shore-lining seaweed, this mollusc (the foot is evident in this upturned specimen) is covered with leaf-like cerata that are cast off when the animal feels threatened to offer would-be predators a mouthful of sticky slime. Losing too much cerata results in unsightly bald patches that will take a few weeks to regrow. The animals are thought to feed on algae and I spotted a pair making bisexual whoopee in a lovenest of seaweed.
Also lurking amidst the Caulerpa were tiny crabs and anomurans such as this perky brown-striped hermit crab. In small pools surrounded by vegetation, there were trapped fish such as this juvenile filefish. A diamond wrasse (Halichoeres nigriscens) was huddling on an algal mat. It responded to the flashes of duckarazzi by attempting to nose-dive into the sand, but the grains here were probably too large to allow for burrowing. Wrasses are found over sandy seabottoms, where they dive in to escape enemies. One episode of The Blue Planet, though, showed how bottlenose dolphins used their sonar to locate and dig up hidden wrasses. A wrasse fate indeed. In contrast to clownfish where the guys grow up to be girls, labrids are born female and instead of maturing into ladies, the lasses end up as wrasses. After enduring a few mug shots, the fish shuddered as I embraced it and gave it a rubbing-ducky placed it in a deeper pool. Needing no help though was a spotted seahorse (Hippocampus kuda) with its tail entwined around some weed.
A large specimen of Dendrodoris denisoni was set loose in the same pool. This nudibranch with neon blue spots is a sponge feeder, producing digestive juices that slurrify their prey into a sponge soup that is sucked up by pore-like mouth. The pair of 'tentacles' at the head end are rhinopores that serve as sensory organs. Unlike some other gastropods, nudibranches lack advanced eyes, and those groups that have optical sensors boast tiny specks that do little better than tell between light and dark. Dorid nudibranchs have visibly naked gills on their back, but arminoid nudibranchs have their gills hidden under the mantle. Armina semperi has a curious garb of flattering stripes topped by a blue butt and a head with a blue and yellow 'cover and short red-tipped rhinopores. This species feeds on sea pens.
A larger find was this coastal horseshoe crab (Tachypleus gigas) floundering on the mud and rudely showing my duck a rude sign with its pointy end. The triangular cross-section of the tail sets it apart from the smaller mangrove horseshoe crab which has a round tail in cross-section. An ancient order of arthropods, these armoured trilobite-like creatures seem to lack a body altogether, being an assembly of clawed legs on a central axis ending in a mean tail spike that is shielded by a hard upper shell bearing two compound eyes. They spawn close to shore, in massive aggregations on some beaches, providing a vital bounty of eggs for migrating waders. The adults are fancied by some diners, although I can't see how an animal that is all legs and carapace can yield much in edible flesh. Their blue blood is the subject of much pharmaceutical interest for its diagnostic serum, but such elevated horizons are surely moot in these parts where it's far more important to dig up coasts for profitable development and collect seafood without regard for sustainability than spare the effort to conserve a living repository of biological wealth. The trivial research is best left to scientists such as this team in Denmark who fail to understand the overriding imperative of fiscal motives.
A handful of knobbly sea stars were seen by our group, and the newly betrothed monkey made off with one for a menage a trois with her mate. Half an hour before sunrise, the boat returned and we clambered back up, having let the waist-deep sea get in where the sun don't shine. The sky turned a deep blue and the waters rippled with ultramarine strength. Alas, the dawn was dreary, with a sad sheen of pale scarlet heralding the new day. Back at Changi Village, eggsaperation awaited in albumen that defied hot water to emerge runny and snotty. Even ample servings of steaming tea failed to rouse the stupor of a crew in daze.
More discoveries at Beting Bronok in:
• The WildFilms blog
• Kok Sheng's Wonderful Creations blog
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