The annotated budak

Simi fish

  sijie and dead fish 
  Originally uploaded by budak.

Sijie sacrificing his nasal sanity to give an idea of the size of this dead fish by the rocky shore near the jetty at Ubin. One reader thought it's a snook, but apparently snooks are neotropical, so I am ruling that out. The fish's original colours have already faded but the body shape plus the position of the dorsal and anal fins suggest that this might be a cobia (Rachycentron canadum). This specimen looks like an adult and the species is known to occur in local waters, although some time ago, the authorities were reported to be aquaculturing them. A solitary  and swift predator, the cobia is the sole member of the family Rachycentridae and  based on larval characteristics is thought to be closely related to the dolphinfishes (Coryphaenidae). Juvenile specimens also bear a striking resemblance to remoras.

Sea hare and sea star

  sea hare mantle 

The currently hamburgerish leafmonkey would probably like this sea hare which is christened Syphonota geographica. It's by far the largest sea slug I have seen, spilling out slightly from my palm as I sought to place it in a photofriendly non-turbid seagrass pool. This slug enjoys a wide distribution and hence regional variations are not surprising. The markings on local specimens range from patchy brown to ornate green, while elsewhere, they can exhibit baroque labyrinths and scripts of byzantine detail. Ria came across this fellow on Cyrene Reef after Saturday's seagrass transect. Named for their lagomorph-like rhinopores and relatively speedy pace (for a mollusc), sea hares make up for the lack of an external shell (a remnant shell is encased within the mantle) by using chemical defences  obtained from their diet of algae or cyanobacteria. When disturbed, they release a cloud of coloured ink that probably tastes like ink (duh!) and deters most predators. Did I also mention that they breed like rabbits and have mass sex by the beach?

  knobbly star! 

The molluscan map wasn't really helpful in preventing my duck from wandering off tangent on the reef. I ended up seeing stars, from a submerged bar filled with fornicating sand stars to this juvenile knobbly seastar prowling amongst the Thalassia. Also known as the horned or chocolate chip star for obvious reasons, Protoreaster nodosus is deservingly an icon of local marine conservation, for its eye-opening dimensions, quiet charisma and faltering status on Singapore's shores. When overturned, purplish tube feet can be seen from the grooves beneath the arms. Even on less disturbed seagrass meadows, this species is not as common as it might be, and the rarity of juveniles such as this 20 cm spanner suggests a low rate of recruitment and survivability. And as more offshore islands face the axe of development, the number of sites that could reseed decimated populations dwindles and one day, these and other stars will likely fade from our seas like stellar myths in a smoky sky.

Never mine

  drinking 

Before the night's double bill (at the late hour of 2115!), we settled at Archipelago for a tipple pint and more with Lauren and Nic, Pinoyers at large. Sitting and chatting with them makes my duck feel perky from close proximity to three sweet young things his age. Evie tells me Lauren has been blogging since ten and is the Philippine equivalent of xiaxue, only tons better. Too bad I didn't know that earlier as my duck blabbered and blurted out all sorts of indiscrete notions while stealing sips from juicier glasses. Now this bird will probably meet a virtual fate worse than soft-boiled balut in a well-deserved tarring of his sordid fingers feathers upon Lauren's touchdown early on Wednesday.

Weeping Warpaint
War movies by a post-modern generation were the highlights of tonight's Singapore Film Festival instalment. "The Changi Murals" by Boo Junfeng is a brief but intensely personal (and probably overly indulgent for some) retelling of the biblical murals painted by Bombardier Stanley Warren (15 Field Regiment, Royal Regiment of Artillery) during his internment at the dysentery wing of Changi Prison in 1942-43. Full credits for the film are listed on its official website.

The short film charts Warren's agonising task of creating icons of devotional hope in a time of despair and regular scenes of brutality and deprivation. Brushes are forged from clipped scalps and set in place by crude tools. Boo has a penchant for in-your-face close-ups with an intrusive quality that can discomfit. The acting is uneven (the Japanese guards are much too casual) but the two leads (though much less gaunt than their roles would have called for) are by and large compelling in intensity and earnestness. (Apparently, Boo was once given the suggestion that he cast a local in the titular role, but I guess he didn't in the end as Mark Lee was unaffordable not available.) The past, as lived and relived in reluctance by a post-war Warren on his way to a restoration session (a replica of the POW Chapel is now housed in the Changi Museum, as the original prison has since been demolished; the original chapel is now in Australia) becomes a memory of contention for the souls of mates lost and minds forsaken on the path to glory.

Boys and bombs
A stark contrast in tone and tempo, "Aki Ra's Boys" by James Leong and Lynn Lee explores the aftermath of war through eyes untempered by the baggage of conquest but no less shattered by its undying implements. A former child soldier for the Khmer Rouge and sower of mines, Aki Ra now runs a land mine museum in Siem Riep (see the filmmaker's blog for an update on Aki Ra and his museum) and works to uncover and deactivate the millions of fatal footsteps that lie across the country.

Between bouts of mine-seeking with a handheld metal detector and a disarmingly nonchalant approach in deactivating active mines, Aki Ra serves as foster father to a bevy of young land mine victims displaced from their homes and families. Among them are Boreak and Vannak, two 12-year old boys with blown-away right arms and irrepressibly explosive attitudes to life. Visitors to the museum help to fund their education, which in turns fuels a furious pursuit of fun in all its forms: football with just one leg a-kicking, girly card games with lasses who laugh off lost limbs, victorious wrestling matches over fully-limbed companions and barely affordable video games.

In one of those strange twists in life, children such as Boreak end up 'better' for all their early tragedy, with more than half a chance of an educated pathway and exposure to urban possibilities (he gives a solidly deadpan tour of mine diversity and mortality rates from mortar bombs and anti-tank devices to directional claymores and waist-cutting bouncing betties) than their unmaimed siblings in distant villages where a television is the ultimate luxury.

There is unbelievable swagger in both Boreak's boastful brawls in a half cape as well as Aki Ra's demining team, who prefer to dice with death in the confidence of their own hands than suffer surprises from second-hand loads. Fate may be cruel but its fatality is blunted by the will to live and lust for life in these children caught up in an arms race between powers and ideologies beyond the reach of a human touch.   

Cowfish

  cowfish head 

A long-horned cowfish (Lactoria cornuta) that was stranded in one of the shallow seagrass pools on Cyrene Reef. Classified in the order Tetraodontiformes, cowfishes share the family Ostraciidae with trunkfishes and boxfishes (they are essentially horny boxfishes) and are closely allied to other hard bodied groups like triggerfishes, filefishes and puffers. A bony plated carapace encloses the body, giving protection against most predators and some species release a toxic chemical (ostracitoxin) that kill all other fishes in the vicinity when distressed. The horns and protrusions from the abdomen may also help to camouflage the fish.

Like puffers and triggerfish, cowfish swim by propelling themselves with their tiny dorsal and anal fins while the tail is used for steering. Cowfishes feed on benthic invertebrates which they disturb by blowing jets of water onto the sediment with their tubular mouths. Less raging bull than sheepish heifer, this fellow was probably rueing the day he (or she) got caught on the flats at low tide, as waves of reefwalkers fell over each to get their share of his virtual hide. For once, I was glad that we found something on the reef that was even hornier than my duck...

A fishy tale

  catfish small 

Early on Friday, a dementedly hardcore remnant of the 70+ strong troupe known as TeamSeagrass gathered at the edge of the Rasa Sentosa Resort. Earlier we had discovered that entry to this happy island is free during the children's hour. Munching on springrolls and eggtarts from the nocturnal shop by the junction of Desker Road and Jalan Besar, we waited for the dawn and dimming tide. Meanwhile, Ria wandered off to a doomed shore where large growths of coral and everything else that lives around it will soon be dredged and dumped for the sake of an underwater world amenable to dice-throwing dinks. When these reefs and their fringing cliffs are gone, only this patch of seagrasses and coral rubble by the resort's seawall will remain of Sentosa's once lush natural coasts. Ditto the island's fragmented coastal woods and their feathered fliers, as gardeners who fail to see the woods for the trees descend upon the forest and play God in the name of a different deity in green.

  butterflyfish

All geared up in pink, Andy, Helen, Siti and my duck descended onto the shore and proceeded to trample every seagrass in sight survey the resident Enhalus acoroides and Halophila ovalis using a secret random methodology where we blindly shotputt the quadrats at each other and hope for the best. After the work was done, the sun was still barely up and that proved to be an excellent time to stalk resident fishes still groggy and gong gong from their slumber. Many inch-long copper-banded butterflyfish (Chaetodon rostratus) were darting between the coral outcrops and seagrass clumps. These pretty and sought-after aquaria specimens are easily recognised by their dainty snouts and false eye spot and are remarkably common in local waters, subject to the healthy presence of corals and other reef invertebrates on which they feed.

  jorunna funebris

We found also three separate schools of juvenile striped eeltail catfish (Plotosus lineatus). These fish gather in tight balls for double protection in the safety of numbers as well as a phalanx of venomous spines that threaten to skewer seafood-seeking ducks. Siti tried to split up one group with a ruler but they counterattacked and made her beg for mercy stubbornly refused to disassemble. Both soft and hard corals, along with lush seaweeds, grow in abundance here and support a good range of other sessile as well as mobile creatures that rely on the reefbuilders for shelter and sustenance. A black sea cucumber waved its tube feet in our faces, while a hairy crab glared at our gazing chins. Just a stone's throw away from the shore, we saw a polka-dotted nudibranch (Jorunna funebris ) sliding over a finely branched seaweed with countless minute arthropods. As the day broke, a few early-risers from the resort peered at us, musing aloud in foreign tongues. Some came down to the beach as well, and even started to fill bags with organic souvenirs until Siti came upon them and gently dissuaded them with soft words and a steely stare.   

  rocky shore with tower

Is it too late to save Sentosa's corals from the Integrated Resort? It's still worth a try though (click here to see Wild Singapore's presentation to REACH and Genting), to at the very least raise the cry that a wealth of life thrives at the very doorsteps of the Underwater World, a centre that claims to champion marine conservation. Would not such mantras be exposed as mere spin and splatter when ancient reefs within sight of fibreglass tanks get no reprieve from Singapore's limitless drive to reclaim and remake its shores in the name of precarious profit?    

See-through cucumber

  cucumber fat 

After a quickie trawl through the transect at Chek Jawa on Sunday (which took only 20 minutes compared to nearly two hours at Cyrene Reef the day before as our particular site had only two species and I was in no danger of mistaking Thalassia hemprichii for Cymodocea rotunda), Helen and I were pondering the behaviour of a large striped hermit crab in a noble volute shell that was clinging to a cospecific less than half its size in a gong gong shell. We thought the bigger crab had brunch in mind, but later Derek said it was probably a male holding on a female, waiting for her to moult so that he can mount her....

  hermit crabs 

As we were squatting there, doing whatever people do when they are sunning their gluteus maximus, Helen gave a blood-curling squawk squeak. She clearly has bigger balls than my duck, as the sight that she saw would have probably scared the pants off me. From somewhere between our legs, this naked nodule of plasm emerged from the mud and flopped about by our feet while making rude gestures from both its front and back sides. From its 'head', little yellow tentacles poked out and tried to grab hold of my duck and visible streams of wet farts spurted from its behind.

  cucumber tentacles

My best guess is that this is a see-through sea cucumber. It doesn't appear to have any tube feet, but the five longitudinal muscle bands (which accords it the 5-ray symmetry of echinoderms) are visible on its bulbous body, which is able to expand into a long wormy tube and contract into a glutinous ball. According to the book "A Guide to Sea Stars and other Echinoderms of Singapore", the animal breathes through openings at its anus (which must make for really bad breadth) and feeds on organic muck in the muddy sediments. I tried poking it to see if it would burst and release a flood of cucumber goo, but the skin is tauter than it looks. It decided we weren't very pleasant company and started to borrow into the mud again. Holothurians don't really like to say hello...