Kusu Island is one of the Southern Islands in Singapore, located about to the south of the main island of Singapore and below the Singapore Straits. Kusu means 'Tortoise Island' or 'Turtle Island' in Hokkien (); the island is also known as Peak Island or Pulau Tembakul in Malay.

During the lunar ninth month of every year, the Kusu Island pilgrimage attracts thousands of devotees who visit and worship at the Kusu Island Tua Pek Kong Temple. Besides the Chinese temple, the island is also home to Keramat Kusu.

From two outcrops on a reef, the island was enlarged and transformed into an island of .

Mythology

There are many legends surrounding the island and they mainly revolve around a giant tortoise as well as the friendship between two men, one Malay and the other Chinese.

  1. Two holy men by the name of Syed Rahman, an Arab, and Yam, a Chinese, who meditated and fasted on their pilgrimage to Kusu Island. During the journey, Yam fell ill, and Syed prayed for his recovery. Their lives were saved when a boat appeared with food and water. Thereafter, the 2 holy men regularly visited Kusu Island to give thanks. The Tua Pek Kong temple and Datuk Keramat were subsequently erected and dedicated to their memory.
  2. During one lunar 9th month centuries ago, shipwrecked sailors were rescued by a giant turtle which turned itself into an island. The sailors returned the next year to make offerings. Since then, Kusu Island has become a place of worship. With the arrival of Stamford Raffles in 1819, the island was selected as a reference point for ships entering the new port, and a signal station was built on the island in 1822.

The original residents of the island, the Orang Laut, were relocated by the government to the Singapore mainland in the 1970s and subsequently boatmen who ferry devotees to the island. After their departure, there are no permanent residents on the island. In 1975, Kusu Island was expanded through land reclamation from two small outcrops totalling 2.5 ha into a recreational island of 8.5 ha.

In 2021, during the pilgrimage season in October, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) restricted the island to 500 visitors per day by limiting the number of passengers to 50 per ferry trip due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore. There were only 10 hourly ferry trips per day.

On 17 April 2022, the keramats were badly damaged in a fire. Most of the resconstruction work was completed before the 2022 pilgrimage season, allowing devotees to make their pilgrimage. Retiling was done, at a cost of over $200,000, and a second set of stairs with guards rails was opened. The keramat was without a roof and covered with temporary tentage, due to high costs of rebuilding. It was also missing walls and a storeroom to store prayer materials.

In 2025, the bumboat jetty was temporarily closed for structural checks and repair works by the SLA. The main jetty is still operational.

Facilities

At the top of the hillock on Kusu Island stood a large shrine, the Keramat Kusu that consisted of three shrines. While the origin of the Keramat was unknown, there are two variations of the origin. The first version was that it was the shrine for a Malay sailor or fisherman

A stand-alone open-air hawker centre is located in the middle of the island but it is only open during festivals or pilgrimages to the keramat or the temple. The island has a main jetty and a bumboat jetty. though these reef ecosystems have also been degraded though land reclamation and modified through the construction of coastal defences. The Singapore Blue Plan 2018, a ground-up initiative published by the Singapore Institute of Biology, proposes Kusu Island alongside Saint John's and Lazarus islands for elevated protection because it is an established site for coral nurseries and a shoreline offering sheltered areas for new coral growth. The endangered basket star Euryale aspera, which was presumed locally extinct, was identified by the 2015 Comprehensive Marine Biodiversity Survey at the southeast of Kusu Island. The locally-endangered sea urchin Chaetodiadema granulatum was identified at a 5m depth at Kusu Island in 2025.

References

  • Info for visitors on wildsingapore
  • Kusu Island Coral Reef Survey Data on Coral Reefs of Singapore