Food on the flat

The lush lawns of fern-like Halophila spinulosa and jumbo tablespoons of Halophila ovalis along Changi's seaward edge offer a vast habitat for countless marine creatures. As their rhizomes crawl under the sea bottom, they bind the substrate with a network of roots and bladed shoots that keep the buried sediment from clouding the water column. Alas, the slow and steady work of these soft biofilters is no match for the might of dredging vessels and excavators that plunge deep into the coastal mud to forge channels and mine sand. Natural things, as always, must give way to the needs of human nature.

Between the sandy fingers carved by waves in a cul-de-sac, pools of swimming and scampering beasts scatter before our feet. Young flower crabs dash about at every turn of the head, some paddling away furiously while others sink into the soft grains. Better buried alive than caught dead is also the motto of the moon crabs who vanish under the sand with the speed of gravediggers. With bright eyes that sparkle in our torchlights, juvenile prawns with green and red carapaces dance in the dark, committing minute murder on the sea floor. Like the crabs, they also seek shelter in Changi Below but with less aplomb, as their heads and tails often show up still after a hasty scramble.

Small rabbitfish prey on algae in the shallows, before they grow up to become browsers beneath piers and serve their anointed fate as steamed bearers of spring berries. Sharing their pools are miniature versions of larger beasts – scorpionfish, stargazers, flatheads, sole, flounder and filefish – who spend their youth in the relative safety of coastal waters before they reach harvestable lengths. But as littoral landscapes in this region succumb to the lure of luxury homes and the lifestyles of the rich and clueless, there should be no surprise that the fruit of the sea has less room to frolick and found new generations. Is it possible that the aquatic ape is no less a sotong than this rotund squid that landed on my foot in failing to see that his appetite for creative destruction feeds a hunger that the sea can now barely sate?