The annotated budak

Field trip

The tide sprung low and short on Sunday. Chek Jawa fanned out in an expanse of seagrass and loose weed that gleamed gold and green in the morning rays. The mudflats drew the chill whistles of plovers and whimbrels that plundered the soft layers for spring fuel. In trickling rivulets, the sea deserted the shore and forced its children to find half-time refuges in the baking sand. The stars ran amuck and sped through the pools, while holothurians dug in to keep their bodies abloat. The stream cascaded in gentle terraces, biding warm bodies to turn their backs to the sea and imagine the caress of a meadow brook as it bubbles through a bed of fluid salt.

Nip and duck

Red swimming crabs are some of the most pugnacious crustaceans on the shore. If the bright colours fail to inspire fear, a clueless beachflea is likely to be stopped in his tracks by an angry splash and the sight of a pair of raised claws that penetrate the water's surface. If it is likewise unimmersed, the owner is usually frothing from the mouth as it contemplates the crushing of soft body parts. In a fit of morning madness at Terumbu Raya, my duck sought to test the spiny claws that easily tear apart fish as well spineless prey. The crab poked back. My toes could feel the grip of its chelae which pinched hard. The beast was livid but its cardinal rage was impotent and and drew no blood. It pays to wear protection before your duck runs out of luck...

Aground

The little boat ran aground on the reef thrice, ditching each time a flimsy load of waders. The water was crystal clear, weed-free and threatened to lure confident legs into the deeper edge of the crest. Awash in currents that rush through the narrow channel, the polyps have formed boulders, brains and coffee-table tops that stir with invisible pulses and challenge the morning sky in a contest of colours.

Amidst this city of calcite, ochre barrels of silica offer a show of passive resistance, growing in girth from the inside out as water enters the pores and leaves purified, its nutrients filtered out by flagellated collar cells. More active feeders plunge their bodies into the current, stretching as far as their feet will let them without leaving their limey shells. The sun quickly kills the dawn with a blaze of fusion heat, but for now, the corallite builders stay cool, soaking in a season of aquatic clarity that may not outlive a time of smoke and horrors.

Sunday morning

The year's first morning of seagrass monitoring at Chek Jawa began at four. It was already too late to catch some hot carpark action, but early enough to witness the brief play of colours that simmer the sky in saturated hues before the sun rises to extinguish the dawn in a burst of cloudy blue.

Antsy

The Victorian naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, during his sojourn through the Archipelago, had much to say of these spikey ants: "The curious spiny ants forming the genus Polyrhachis are very abundant in the whole archipelago, though they never swarm like so many others of the family, and rarely inhabit houses. They seem to be truly arboreal species, and are mostly of a rather large size. Many of them are beautifully sculptured or curiously furrowed; and the fantastically shaped spines with which they are almost all furnished render them very interesting objects for examination... The general characteristics of these ants appear to be, that they live in small communities in exposed situations, and are not very active; while, being of generally large size, they must be very much exposed to the attacks of insectivorous birds and other animals. They have neither sting nor powerful jaws to defend themselves, and, from their limited powers of increase, would seem to be peculiarly liable to extermination, without some special protection. It seems probable that this is the purpose of the curious hooks, spines, and points with which they are armed, and which must no doubt render them unpalatable morsels, very liable to stick in the throats of their captors.

"The great number of species of ants, and the curious modifications found among them, indicate that they have much inherent tendency to variation; and we may well imagine how, in the severe struggle for existence which is for ever going on where life is so abundant and varied as in the tropics, the most widely distinct modifications have been seized upon by "natural selection" as a means of safety and perpetuation. The power of rapid increase, the habit of making subterranean abodes, or of seeking food only at night, the poisonous sting, the powerful jaws, minuteness of size, or the being armed with spiny processes, are all advantages to their possessors; and the first rudimentary appearance of any of these, in however slight a degree, would inevitably lead to their persistence and perpetuation, and to the further development of such peculiarities by the preservation of all favourable and the destruction of all unfavourable variations."

Apparently, these ants also form the key ingredient of certain Chinese tonics, including formulas for raging hot rods. It's a curious trait to ascribe to the selfless foragers of a sterile sisterhood.

Victoria's secret

Her Majesty Alexandrina Victoria is said to have started the tradition of brides wearing white with her wedding to Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Unlike Elizabeth, Victoria was no virgin queen, bearing nine children whom she sent forth to the continent as emissaries of kinship. Blut was sadly not thicker than Boden for her grandson Wilhelm II could do little to stem the tide of national pride that left men bent double in Flanders' fields, unsaved by god nor queen. Before a hall built in her memory, misnamed lilies bloom on stiff spikes, casting a shower of pretty membranes that'd please the champions of a monarch mired in prudery.