A clownfish’s last stand

Twenty years ago, scientist Debby Ng documented a pair of false clownfish guarding a brood of eggs at Terumbu Bayan, a reef south of Singapore. Within minutes of her last dive there, barges began dumping fill into the channel, and the reef was gone by 2006 to make way for a petrochemical complex joining Bukom and Busing islands.

By 2017, Singapore had lost about 65% of its coral reef habitat to reclamation while its land area grew by more than a fifth, according to National University of Singapore researchers. Visibility fell from roughly 10 meters in the 1960s to under two by the time of that study, and seagrass cover has dropped more than 45% over five decades.

Singapore now weighs merging islands south of Jurong into a new 'Western Island' for industry, defense, and power, with boundaries still unset. The Ministry of National Development says environmental and engineering studies will inform the plans and stakeholders will be consulted, a promise the divers, guides, and dugongs living in the meadows have heard in some form before.

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