bobbing plastic bottle at little guilin

i was at bukit batok town park (little guilin) and was fascinated by this apparently empty plastic bottle bobbing in the waters of the pond. i figured it had to be a fish or tortoise playfully pushing the bottle around.

after a while, i realised it was not what it had seemed. because whatever was pushing it, it would be uncanny for it to be so good at it that it did not miss even once. the plastic bottle was like the shadow of the one pushing it. looking more closely, i found out that it was a sucker fish (plecostomus) doing the job. and a huge fish at that, more than 30cm long.

and it was not pushing it; it was attached to the bottle by a fishing line. somebody must have used the bottle as a float. the sucker fish must have grabbed the bait on the hook which was tied to the bottle. the huge sucker fish must have caused the line to snap with the hook still lodged in its mouth.

later, in the afternoon, when i went back to check - after my driving session at cdans - the plastic bottle was nowhere to be found. either it had swum to some far corner of the pond or some angler had fished it out of the pond.