The mud flat that has swamped the swimming lagoon between Pulau Hantu Kechil and Pulau Hantu Besar stirs to life when the sun sets. Squadrons of gobies emerge from a soft bed of silt to play tag, while nervous silversides flash long flanks of electric blue over the benthic playground. The receding tide leaves behind scattered pools in a maze of shallow dykes, on which fiddler crabs venture out from burrows to feed, the hours being too late for showy overtures of courtship.
Tawny prawns with pale pleopods and pretty fantails rake the sediment for supper. At the hint of a shadow, they abandon their hunt to dig in and shield their hides from hungrier mouths. Beyond the seawall, on the weed-wracked fringe of the reef, there are far fewer puddles of sand. The tribes that dwell here survive by tunnelling under rock, retreating into crevices or donning coats of glass that allow them to dance without fear in the dark. Others have acquired diplomatic immunity in the arms of sticky carpets.
Most of these cavaliers are carideans, but penaeids too retain a foothold in cryptic circumstances. Some have shrunk to blend in a background of living rock. But even good sized ones, like this prawn in marbled brown, enjoy the open refuge of a mottled wallpaper where they can forage unmarked amid random shapes and fluid patterns that draw a line between a secret life and fatal revelations.
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