It's child's play to explore the rocky beach of Labrador Park when the tide is middling and the sky is mounting a campaign of fear and error against the plans of obstinate picnickers. The natural shoreline begins at the foot of a recursive seawall, where a huddle of turtlegrass punctured by patches of longer blades grows just beyond the sand. The beds were out of reach last week, however, as the winter monsoon had put paid to the spring cycle with a dip in atmospheric pressure and conspiring surges of stormwater that stained the sea with the loam of the land.
A broken range of boulders and miniature canyons begins soon after the columns of the fishermen's pier. The basal portions of the pillars are dotted with the spires of resting periwinkles, sea snails that have conquered the air but captured little new ground in a narrow belt of safety between the waves and the wind. Other grazers occupy the slopes of the rocky mounts; dove shells gather in messy gangs on damp terraces, while turbans and tops squeeze into cracks between and under the shelves. Nerites and slugs, having a higher tolerance for exposure, remain active in their assault on filaments that had survived their first foothold on a harsh terrain. Equal violence lurks in the coils of robust hunters – drills with bumps, knobs and spines – that menace barnacles and limpets with the force of tooth.
The chain soon splits, sinks and resurfaces to form a tumble of rock and rubble close to the base of Labrador's cliffs and under the shade of weather-beaten ketapang and twisted sea laurel. It was too late in the day for Melastoma to unfurl its lavender blooms, but the buttery drapes of Dillenia still hung from pliant stalks that aid the birds after the bees by twisting toward the sun when their seeds are ripe for the picking. The fruit of the coastal forest probably trickles down to feed many of the creatures that roam over sand and stone. Sea slaters, bug-eyed analogues of roaches with more segments and greater sense, scatter and circle back with pestilential speed when shadows approach, while shore crickets simply hop away and purple crabs edge into crevices that invite a nick.
The slugs of this elevation, which borders wet and high, are different from the coarse grey things that glide over the lower ranges. Covered with tiny bumps and ranging in size from a sesame seed to a quarter, these onchs are dull black with pale trails on their backs. They share the algal mats with tiny crabs and elusive worms that sneak in and out of gaps in the thalli or loop to finer hoards. Here, too, are secretive blobs that cling to the dark side and crawl out to capture careless isopods when the waters reach their crannies.
The foothills of this mountain chain form temporary barrages that hem pools of glassy shrimp and insignificant gobies. One of these is an animal a little more robust than the red-nosed carideans that swarm offshore flats and sporting yellow dots on its joints and the base of the telson. Sharing the puddles are small snapping shrimp who appeared nonplussed at the random motions of fellow decapods and unruly fish before their organised parlours. Zoanthids and Phymanthus have settled in some shallow nooks, and a lone black sea cucumber lying in an overhang revealed in hindsight a hanger-on in the form of a pigmented shrimp with a striped abdomen.
Hollows in the same rocks provide shelters for intertidal gastropods and their executioners. Snug in a hole at waist-level, a red-eyed reef crab glared at a premature intrusion into its retreat by a slim body and blind lens. In about an hour, when the gates are locked and the sun is down, the crab would emerge to scour the beach for unfortunate snails and break into their homes with a crushing grip. It was a welcome find on a day of drops, for the feisty beast has few strongholds left on the mainland save this strip of grass and coral that once guarded the passage to a new harbour and is now besieged by the growing arms of a port intent on sustaining its status as master of the sea and a prime mover of earth in harrowed water.
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