Off limits and off the boat, Pulau Sekudu refuses to yield to the greater draw of nearby Chek Jawa or the ravaging hands of collectors on canoes. Covering an area no greater than three football fields wide on a night of low spring and a mere bundle of grey rocks when the tide is high, the islet punches above its weight with a shore that brims with life at every step. Aided by a bloom of crunchy green algae, the sandy mound around the boulders gives way to a field of lower life forms that pursue their business with no regard for human pride. They forage with abandon, seemingly unaware or unconcerned that their realm has been exposed to clumsy feet and peering eyes.
In just one random pool, a flurry of minute ripples reveals itself to be a swirling cloud of arthropod debris. Transluscent shrimp, anxious isopods and earnest amphipods jostle in a thin layer of water for even tinier creatures that swarm around the salty fronds. Every flitting dot stares back with beady compound eyes and every comma of green segments and jointed legs swerves wildly on its own axis, losing no opportunity to partake of a moveable feast. It's a party to savour, for the wall of air that keeps hungrier maws from these soft-shelled swimmers is soon to pass and the feeding frenzy must disperse before their pad gives way to a surge of waves that will smother this scene of living dust.
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