The annotated budak

A beastiary of clams

Giant clams typically present viewers with a prominent gape, which is enhanced in living animals by a colourful and fleshy mantle filled with photosynthetic zooxanthellae that convert sunlight into energy for themselves and their sedentary host. Prompted perhaps by this benthic visage, German-born soldier-turned-naturalist Georgius Everhardus Rumphius was led to coin, in his parvum opus, The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet, the binomial Chama Aspera for large shellfish that he encountered, or was presented with, in the town of Hiru on the northern coast of Ambon, where he lived in the latter half of the 17th century.

Chama, explains Rumphius scholar E.M. Beekman, comes from chema, Greek for a "gaping mussel", while aspera means "rough". Today, the former term is attached to heterondont bivalves in the family Chamidae, which in common parlance are known as jewelbox shells. Rumphius' coinage, which arose from his own deliberations and pre-dated modern conchology, denotes Chamae as 

"all those Shells which, lying bare on the ground, for the most part gape, and could, therefore, be called Gapers."

He later adds:

"Chametrachea or Chama Aspera, are those that have a rough shell, either through ribs that stick out, or because of scales and nails."

This description would ring a bell for those who are familiar with Southeast Asian reef assemblages as well as the way baselines for shallow-water fauna have shifted over the centuries to render the common rare and erase gaps in the chain of life under the tides. Tridacnines (for the family Tridacnidae is now buried within the true cockles) once occurred in densities that could support littoral populations across the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific, and may have persisted as a sustainable fishery in Rumphius' time, when he gave the name Chama squammata to an ill-defined taxon, known in Ambonese Malay as Bia garu, "that is Scratchers, because one could scratch someone badly with them, or because they scratch the hands, when one handles them." Bia is a broad term for "shell" while garu can mean "harrow" or "rake", a reference perhaps to the toothed fringe of the valves or more possibly to the sharp scutes on the shell's outer surface.

(Rumphius also took pains to distinguish Chamma from what he termed Klipkoussen, a "vulgarism" that combines the Dutch words for "rock" (Klip) and "stocking" (Kous). The great naturalist observed that some contemporaries used the term to refer to snails that we now recognise as cowries, but found some impropriety in it, as Klipkoussen was also applied to female genitalia, and by extension, women. Beekman, who translated Rumphius for a late 20th century audience, chose to render the word as "clack dish", a Shakespearean euphemism that refers to a beggar's bowl for alms but which the Bard employed to refer to a lady's pudendum in Measure for Measure, in which the Duke "put a ducat in her clack-dish".)

(A more sober footnote on etymology comes with Beekman's annotations on the origin of the modern genus for giant clams, which he explains arose from a "funny anecdote" by the elder Pliny "that the name tridacna, from the Greek tris for "three" and daknō "I bite", came about because someone jested that he would like to have the oysters that reputedly came from the 'Indian Sea' because they were so big that they needed three bites to be consumed.")

Rumphius was quick to discern between what he called Pelagiae, "the largest of all Shellfish", which grew to a length of 5 feet and were so bulky that "6 or 8 people have more than enough to carry just one" and were confined to deeper waters, and smaller Littorales, which could be found around beaches. The latter was sexually dimorphic, he added, with the female being

"the most common, its shell is divided into 4 or 5 round ridges that jut out, making deep furrows between both, with sharp edges that are jagged, so that the shell goes up and down like waves, both inside and outside; on the back are large curved scales, very similar to human nails, round and sharp in front, but most of them, especially the old ones, are broken off and damaged."

Male Chamma, on the other hand, were

"more oblong, divided into 9 or 10 ridges, and the scales are closer together, but are shorter than those of the Female, and the opening on the one side is much larger: otherwise it has the same shape."

Beekman has suggested that the male animals may have been Tridacna maxima, a species that exhibits relatively weak vertical folds and close-set, scarcely prominent scutes, and which partially embeds itself into coral rubble and other reef substrates. The females were probably the Tridacna squamosa of modern nomenclature, a giant clam with deeply fluted valves and a formidable array of scutes (scales), which serve in young individuals as an adaptation against predatory crabs and fish. Rumphius may have been sexually confused, but his comments on mature specimens ring true; large giant clams, such as one encountered in repeated surveys of patch reefs near Pulau Semakau, may have shells bereft of their "nails" after years of bites and being rocked against nearby rocks by unruly waves.

Rumphius was also fascinated by the appearance of older Bia garu, which had outer shells that were "very much overgrown with moss, lime, and other sea grit, even with other shells, mussels and coral trees, so that one would hold it to be a rock, rather than a shell." Young specimens, he noted, "are a dirty white on the outside, without luster, inside a yellow-white like ivory."

He was rather less fond of the "Beast that lives within", however, which he found

"dreadful to behold, because if one looks upon one that is gaping, one sees nothing but a taut skin, full of black, white, yellow, and lead-coloured veins, painted like a snake's skin."

Despite this distaste, Rumphius was able to muster enough scientific curiosity to describe morphological features such as the clam's inhalant and exhalant siphons, beard-like "coarse and tough threads" that the animals use to "cling to the rocks so they will not be tossed around", and a thick tendo fastened to both halves of the shell, which is surrounded by a fleshy disk that was judged to be "the best for eating".

Unfortunately, Rumphius was to veer into more outlandish territory in his, almost certainly second-hand, observations of Pelagiae, which he wrote was capable of snapping off anchor ropes and careless limbs, and furthermore, had a predatory bent:

"They gape almost always when on the ground, especially in order to catch the little fishes that come in multitudes to swim and play therein, until all of them together are suddenly locked in there, and come to serve as the Beast's food."

Collaborating with Tridacna gigas in this macabre trap, according to Rumphius, is a

"kind of little Shrimp... which pinches its flesh when it sees that there is a great deal of prey in its house, whereupon the shell snaps shut, and one believes that the Beast cannot live, if that little Pinna Guard happens to be away from it, because the Beast cannot see, and cannot be on guard for robbers."

Rumphius' discourse on Bia garu goes on to cover methods for capture, culinary and organoleptic aspects, local superstitions, and the formation of precious stones, even light-emitting ones, within the gape. Species believed to be Tridacna crocea, which burrows into rock and even concrete, and Hippopus are also discussed, in what is thought to be the first systematic description of living tridacnines, their habits and natural habitats in modern conchology. More than three centuries after his tour of duty in the Spice Islands, Georg Everhard's nocturnal submissions still take no prisoners in their celebration of antiquity, on which the former mercenary heaps a mélange of lore from the Malay archipelago, and his lifelong desire to capture the living treasures of the East Indies and set them loose in an imaginarium of words that draw no line between the material world and the magic of reality.

In a pinch

There exists a fine line between peril and delight, between a meal that thrills and a mouthful that kills. The world beyond safe sea walls is a minefield of mixed signals, where a bright mark may scream blue murder and a carapace of spines may hide pleasures of softer flesh. Beauty is often skin-deep and razor-sharp on the tidal flats; a bed of blossoms, pinkish rosettes on long, swaying rods, rises from a crown of cruel rock, while starlight beckons with a thousand blinks from columns with a cutting edge and a cold, crude streak. A battery of jaws awaits at segments at the end of a rainbow, and names like "rabbit", "puffer" and "cat" should be trigger warnings rather than an invitation to reach out and rub – hazards to health in the wrong hands with a point to prove.

This fine, florid line, which runs through biological families and respects no natural orders, has long ceased to be of meaning to modern man, who has given up on his senses and surrendered his ability to choose to more profiterole deportments. We have forgotten how to read the clues and colours that glow in the waters, to tell the difference between a fair catch and a foul beast, to distinguish food from fiend. This literacy of life, a skill honed by trial and terror, still survived not an age ago, when the sea fed these shores and taught the inhabitants of the Malay archipelago how to find dinner in its depths, to follow its rhythms and flee from its storms.

People on the Indonesian island of Ambon, a land of spice in a rim of fire, were already seasoned readers of signs and devout wanderers three-and-a-half centuries ago, when Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, a mercenary-turned-merchant arrived to rue by day and undertake a lifetime of research by candlelight. German-born but Dutch at heart, Rumphius would chart the flora and fauna of the eastern isles over the next fifty years, creating a cabinet of scientific curiosity filled with descriptions of indigenous plants, marine life and minerals that still ring true and sing with the voices of those who shared their observations – in Ambonese, Malay, Javanese, Makassarese, Chinese, Latin and Dutch – with a blind student who never saw his work in print and suffered the censor of his employers.

Shellfish soft and hard occupy two volumes of Rumphius' D'Amboinsche Rariteitkamer, which depicts many creatures familiar to explorers of the Sunda Shelf but bestows upon them names that pre-date the Linneaen Revolution. Among the menagerie of this cabinet are: Squilla Lutaria or the Mud Crayfish of the mangroves; Cancer Crumenatus, the Purse Crab that scales coconut trees; Cancer Saxatilis or Cattem Batu that is filled with "goodly meat"; the bentho-pelagic Cancer Marinus or Sea Crabs; the Sea Apple which Rumphius dubbed Eschinus Marinus Esculentus; Stella Marina Quarta which the author compares to a "hard, baked Pasty with black burned knobbles"; and the Cancelli or Cuman, "little crabs" that Rumphius likened to worms for their twisted tails.

Rumphius took to heart the culinary warnings of his informants, who saw danger in certain patterns. In one chapter, he detailed Cancer Floridus, an intertidal crab locals called Cattam Bonga for its shield, which appeared

"as if it were strewn with flowers: The Ambonese also call it Yu Nikimetten, because the ends of the Pincers are somewhat black, which is why they are counted among those, which Nature has marked not for eating, wherefore it is thought to be a smaller kind of the big Black Tooth [Etisus sp.], described hereafter in Chapter 19. They are not eaten, because the Natives consider it a common sign, that all Crabs, that have Pincers of which the claws are black or brown, are not fit to eat, as if they had been marked by Nature."

A similar word of caution is issued for the Cattam Tambaga, whose belly is

"marbled with red and white. One swears that this Copper Crab is very harmful, and therefore rarely appears in the light of day. It is smooth over its entire body, and shiny like porcelain."

While he was still able and sighted, Rumphius must have also stumbled, on rocky shoals off the village of Hitu where he was stationed, upon a crab he called Cancer Terrestris Tenui Testa or Cancer Rubris Oculis. He noted the crab's black-tipped pincers, but added that this Cattam Darat was sometimes consumed to dire ends.

"It happened in my day, in Hitulamma, that a Woman and her little girl ate nothing more than the Pincers of these Crabs, yet were found dead by the fire, with the pieces of the Crabs still lying next to them. Otherwise, the general antidote for all such Crabs, is scrapings of black Accarbahar, the root of Siriboppar; or Pissang Swangi, and of Lalan grass, either drunk, or chewed with Pinang, and the juice swallowed, which will expel this hurtful food by vomitting."

More than 300 years later, the same three crabs still roam the reefs of the Coral Triangle and its urban peripheries, lurching from pool to weedy pool when the moon tugs at the region and raises basins of coral around islands such as Jong. Rubble and rough waters surround this nubbin of a landmass, which is guarded by kites that float over its cliffs and hermit crabs that patrol a slope of coarse sand and curious pickings: cage nets, old pillows, fallen branches and the topmost ridges of a formation named after a ship that turned into stone.

During these few hours of blight, the xanthids tend to lie low, shuffling between cover as they graze or grapple with more difficult feed. The eriphiids – Rumphius' "Land Crabs" – on the other hand, seem to revel on the exposed flats. Smaller individuals may be found in breaks between large boulders or lurking in hollows that seem too high for aquatic life. Larger, at times gravid, specimens defend choice corners with both bark and bite. Not a few make the most of their ability to straddle the fine, fleeting line between danger and desire by entering fresh bodies of water to find fellow sea monsters that the tide has trapped and tackling these lesser beasts with teeth built to crush shell and scale. One red-eyed hunter had a toadfish in its grip as it sought to drag its catch into deeper parts. The prey was itself a predator, a devourer of benthic dwellers that was in the wrong place at the right time. For the crab, it was a bonanza of protein that was probably easier to crack than its usual meals that have to be crushed before consumption and eaten without prejudice as a source of nourishment and perhaps a dose of posthumous vengeance against those who might fail to heed the dark, dread hues of its claws.