There's barely enough water to dunk a duck, but it's enough to keep the ribbon seagrass bed that is spreading over the western corner of Tanah Merah's shore awash with life. Fat-headed gobies worm their way between the stalks, while dubious nerites, creeper snails and tiny hermits eagerly mow the blades for a meal of epiphytic filaments. Compact sea anemones have carved shallow pits for themselves in the meadow, some deep enough to keep the occupants afloat while others are too high up to resist the draining of the tide.
Where the substrate is a little coarser, snapping shrimp create burrows near the base of the carpets, which they tirelessly maintain to prevent breakdowns of communication between the tunnels and their train of command. Other carideans, lacking the arms to voice their feelings or inflict a earful of discontent, enjoy freedom of movement on discs that'd dent thicker shells, having acquired the means to skirt the tentacles and null the sting of a warflower. Sitting easy in solar-powered pads, pairs of glassy shrimps present a marine parade of bold marks and fancy tails as they explore the confines of their home and rock to the tune of caged birds in paradise.
There are also shrimp that live in the open, protected only by their ability to blend in, and that failing, the speed of their reflexes. Rock shrimp in the genus Sicyonia, minute kin of tiger prawns and cocktail snacks, crop up on occasion on southern flats such as Terumbu Semakau and Cyrene Reef, where this barely inch-long individual was found. Like their bigger relatives, the animals are able burrowers, though they seem to favour firmer substrates such as islands of rubble on a sea of sand. But sicyonids are of little interest to trawlers keen on larger prey, and concern themselves with eluding more primitive appetites. Hairy antennae and mottled carapaces help these cryptic decapods break up the the profile of tasty segments amid a background of multi-coloured grains; but even when detected, the shrimp easily skip out of sight when heads are turned or play tricks on the eye with a body of bristles that end in a blinding flash of white.
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