Twenty years ago, scientist and Mongabay board member Debby Ng joined a team documenting life at Terumbu Bayan, a coral reef south of Singapore that was about to be reclaimed. There she encountered a pair of false clownfish living in an anemone. The mother was unusually aggressive, even for a species known to be feisty. […]

At nearby Terumbu Bayan, the reclamation went ahead in 2006. In Debby’s photographs taken before the reef was buried, a cowrie sits over its eggs. A whip shrimp holds on to a sea fan. The clownfish faces the camera, close enough to bite.