The lagoon between the two islets that make up Pulau Hantu is a sloshy field of grey and on this windless night, each step through the mud is a balancing act that saps the energy of many regular paces on solid ground. There are spiral secrets and hidden columns lurking beneath the flat, but these cryptic burrowers were lying low on Sunday morning during a tide of middling proportions.
In a puddle that'd fit a soup dish, a half-inch snapping shrimp with a dubious identity prowled around a valley of rubble and rolling sand that forms its rice bowl. By chance or choice, a goby sat near the entrance of the burrow, putting at ease the short-sighted fears of its pool companion, who dug and dressed his pad to fit a pair of unequal yokes.
Firmer mounds between soft expanses provide a suitable substrate for fiddler crabs, who venture from their tunnels for meals dictated not by tummy growls but by the vagaries of the daily tide. In the dark, the males focus on feeding and not fighting, and flee on trails of scent to their holes of comfort when shadows shade the cloudless night.
Decapods that despise dry land swarm in semi-isolated pans of shallow water. Transparent mysids hover in mid-water, paddling half-hearted wishes to make it through another night of hungry mouths and spiny claws. Below them, penaied shrimp dash in shellshocked circles before resorting to silty cloaks of invisibility that hide less than they'd hope.
The movement of heavy bodies through the tidepools sends regular shockwaves that cause silversides and other baitfish to scatter the still water with an eruption of leaps through the surface. Non-pelagic swimmers prefer to lie low, refusing to panic until they come within an inch of a foot and suffer a shadow of doubt in their powers of illusion against the mottled grain. But for the most part, these benthic hoppers have found freedom from the floating tyranny of air bladders to conquer the seabed and play a game of unbeatable numbers near the bottom of the fast food chain.
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