A Survey of Singapore's Reefs
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BIBLIOASIA APR – JUN 2017 Vol. 13 / Issue 01 / Feature If the tides are high a decomposition of animal matter These platforms of living rock were usually well as Donax canniformis, a fibrous shrub It never will appear, carried on in a gigantic scale… If hidden under the waves, too deep to be used to weave these traps.8 That little winking island malaria is produced from animal visible but high enough to scrape or worse, Both etymologies are apt; fishermen Not very far from here; decomposition on land, and we have sunder a stray hull. visited (and still frequent) these reefs to set a similar decomposition at sea, I But from the mid-19th century, a few traps weighed down by coral chunks and But if the tides are low think I am entitled to make my first toponyms began to emerge, as the words checked at regular intervals for stingrays And mud-flats stretch a mile, deduction, that wherever a coral reef and worlds of native pilots, boatmen and and groupers. And these reefs indeed rise The little island rises is exposed at low tide, decomposition islanders who knew these waters for gen- with the falling tide “to stretch out before To take the sun awhile. will go on to an extent proportioned to erations by heart filtered into the mental, one”, forming an expanse of land, a shim- – Margaret Leong1 the size of the reef and that malaria and eventually printed, charts of foreign mer of sand and shoal where minutes ago will be the result.”3 cartographers to give shape and signifi- there was bare sea. But in an hour or two, cance to these submarine forms. this ephemeral landscape will vanish once For all his misplaced suspicions, Dr An 1849 map is perhaps the first more as the waters return to shield the reef Little’s initial encounters with Blakang to mark “Ter Pempang”, west of Pulau and its builders from sun and sight. Mati’s pristine reefs betrayed more than a Bukom, which lies off the southern coast Intriguingly, the 1849 map indicated In 1847, Dr Robert Little, a British surgeon, tinge of admiration for their alien beauty. of Singapore. “Ter” is short for terumbu, the presence of a hut on Terumbu Pem- set off on a series of tours to Singapore’s He was moved to write: Malay for a reef that is visible only during pang as well as another on Pulo Pandan. southern islands, beginning with the isle low tide. It is less clear what “Pempang” These huts must have been set above the iknown as Pulau Blakang Mati (present-day “At low water spring tides, the whole refers to. One possibility is that pampang highest tide point, perhaps as shelters for Sentosa2). His journeys were no joyrides; the of these reefs are uncovered, so means “to stretch out before one”.7 Another fishermen from nearby islands. No trace of good doctor was investigating the source of that by lying on the reef, one can Malay word, bemban, denotes a fish trap as any such structures survive today; instead, “remittent fever” – a form of malaria – that look down into a depth of from 4 to 9 had killed some three-fourths of the men fathoms, like as a school boy does on (Facing page) Living reefs off Serapong on the northeast coast of Sentosa. Photo taken by Ria Tan on 23 posted to a signal station at Blakang Mati. a wall and looks at the objects below, May 2011. Courtesy of WildSingapore. The station was indispensable to navigation which here are living corals of many (Below) This painting from the 1830s depicts a cluster of wooden houses perched on stilts on Pulau Brani. in the straits, but as no men were willing to and wondrous shapes, with tints so In the 1960s, residents were asked to resettle on mainland Singapore to make way for the construction of serve at the ill-fated site, it was abandoned beautiful that nothing on earth can a naval base. Courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board. in 1845. equal them. While the lovely coral (Bottom) Two boys playing with their pet roosters in a Malay kampong on Pulau Seking, an offshore island that is now part of Pulau Semakau, 1983. Quek Tiong Swee Collection, courtesy of National In the mid-19th century, malarial fever fish, vying with their abodes in the Archives of Singapore. was often blamed on miasma or bad air liveliness of their colours, are to be that emanated from decaying vegetation seen peeping out of every crevice, in swamps or, in the case of Pulau Blakang which at full tide has but a few feet Mati, its dense pineapple plantations. Being of water to cover it.”4 an annual crop, the remains of every harvest were often left to rot; this led to the belief Dr Little hit an epidemiological dead- that the decaying leaves emitted miasmatic end,5 but his expeditions to Blakang Mati, A Survey of Singapore’s Reefs vapours that infected nearby residents. St John’s and Lazarus Islands as well as Dr Little, however, held a different now-forgotten isles such as Brani, Seking, theory, believing that the miasma originated Sakra and Pesek, offered a rare if fleeting from coral reefs. During the 19th century, window to Singapore’s reefs and the com- extensive fringing reefs lined Singapore’s munities who lived off them. southern shores and islands while isolated or patch reefs, known to locals as terumbu Danger at High Water or beting, abounded in the straits. Although the doctor must have been familiar with Singapore’s reefscape posed no medical these habitats, he found cause to regard threat, but these maritime structures them as less a treat than a threat. He were for centuries cause for other mortal explained: concerns. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a 16th-century Dutch merchant, warned “Wherever we have coral reefs captains to steer clear of areas “full of exposed at ebb tide we have a great Riffes and shallowes” (reefs and shallows) destruction of coralline polyps, and as they sailed past Pasir Panjang en route to China. The 19th-century English hydrog- The reefs that fringed Singapore’s coastline and rapher James Horsburgh would repeat this Marcus Ng is a freelance writer, editor caution, describing the Singapore Straits and curator interested in biodiversity, islands have served for centuries as maritime as “united by reefs and dangers, mostly ethnobiology and the intersection 6 markers, fishing grounds and even homes for between natural and human histories. covered at high water.” His work includes the book Habitats in The Europeans who first ventured island communities. Marcus Ng rediscovers the Harmony: The Story of Semakau Landfill into the straits had few or no names for stories that lurk beneath the waves. (National Environment Agency, 2009 and the reefs that barred their passage. (One 2012), and two exhibitions at the National exception was Sultan Shoal, now the site of Museum of Singapore: “Balik Pulau: an exquisite lighthouse, which Horsburgh Stories from Singapore’s Islands” and explained was named after a ship of this “Danger and Desire”. name that ran aground on the reef in 1789.) 30 31 BIBLIOASIA APR – JUN 2017 Vol. 13 / Issue 01 / Feature The same newspaper report laid bare Today, Sentosa’s surviving coral reefs future discourses on land-use and habitat the fate of some of the reefs and islets off cling to the island’s peripheries: off Sera- conservation in Singapore. Blakang Mati which so beguiled Dr Little pong at its northeast and along Tanjong in the 1840s: “A bigger Sentosa Island Rimau on the northwest, a sliver of natural Shoals of Contention include[s] three other islands: Buran Darat, rocky coastline which guards the colonial- Sarong Island and Pulau Selegu. Terembu era Fort Siloso. Along the mainland, there Pulau Seringat, which was conjoined with [sic] Palawan, formerly a reef off the south- are also fringing reefs along less accessible Lazarus Island (Pulau Sekijang Pelepah) ern coast of Sentosa, has been reclaimed parts of East Coast Park and Tanah Merah, off the southern coast at the turn of the and is now an island called Pulau Palawan.” whose ultimate fate probably hinges on 21st century, offers a glimpse into the PULO PANDAN: AN ISLAND TURNED REEF as a pig pen in 1985, and now forms part Pulo Pandan is now reduced to Terumbu of Jurong Island. Beting Kusah,16 a sand Pandan and forms part of the Cyrene bank off Changi, now lies under the air- Reefs. But in centuries past, Pulo Pandan port tarmacs. In contrast, Beting Bronok loomed much larger, and even stood out (named after an edible sea cucumber) as a landmark in the straits. The island has escaped the extensive reclamation was signposted by Jan Huyghen van that befell nearby Pulau Tekong and was Linschoten in 1596, when the Dutchman designated a Nature Area in 201317 for its described the journey eastward on the rare marine life such as knobbly sea stars, Selat Sembilan (“Straits of Nine Islands”) thorny sea urchins and baler shells. between Pasir Panjang and the present the straits. Up until the mid-1970s, women- Buran Darat, a coral patch named Jurong Island: folk in Pulau Sudong, an island southwest after “a kind of sea-anemone of a light of the Pempang reefs, “regularly collected green colour and eaten by the Chinese”, Terumbu Pempang Laut (one of six adjacent “… running as I said before along sea foodstuffs from the island’s fringing was reclaimed in the late 1990s to create reefs bearing the appellation “Pempang”) by the Ilands on the right hand, reef”,12 some 12 times the size of the island, the Sentosa Cove luxury resort.18 Terumbu hosts a warning beacon, while a large sign and coming by the aforesaid round before the reef was reclaimed in 1977.