Diving Holidays In Mafia Island

Mafia Island is the largest of a small archipelago on the coast of southern Tanzania in the Indian Ocean. Mafia Island is only around 50 km long and 15 km wide, surrounded by a beautiful marine environment. Almost half the coastline is fringing barrier reef forming a protected marine park. The main attraction of a diving holiday to Mafia Island is its feeling of remoteness combined with stunning beaches and incredible marine life. Life on Mafia seems to have stood still whilst the rest of the world races making it feel like you are in the early 20th century. One advantage that Mafia has over it'e better-known sister islands of Zanzibar and Pemba Island is that the main dive sites, especially around Chole Bay, are accessible all year round.

The Diving On Mafia Island

Mafia Island and its reefs are renowned as an excellent diving destination with an unparalleled variety of hard and soft corals and diverse tropical fish. There is a good range of dive sites with shallow reefs of immense beauty and richness, bommies, channels, walls and caves, drift and night dives. You can occasionally see manta and whale sharks here, but you must be lucky. Although there are better world-class dive destinations in terms of visibility and pelagics a diving holiday to Mafia Island is very special with each dive making you feel like you are discovering new dive sites each time.

DIVE SITES ON MAFIA ISLAND

Belami Reef: A shallow dive to 17m, there are many isolated coral heads and a profusion of small tropical fish.

Kinasi Pass Wall: This site has walls and drop-offs down to 22m. The marine life is impressive with large numbers of grouper, stingray and game fish. Reef sharks and tiger sharks can be seen as well as a profusion of smaller fish.

Sefo Reef: Situated far out to sea in the Mafia Channel, this site haunts many large game fish. The reef is in pristine condition but the site is not dived much due to its accessibility. However, for those with time, this is a great dive experience.

Kaule Reef: Good for night dives due to the profusion of lobster found here, this is a shallow dive to 18m. Turtles are often seen and there is a good variety of coral.

Chole Bay: The wonderful Chole Bay is probably the most outstanding part of Mafia Island Marine Park’s marine environment. It is a vast circular bay over 50 sq km with a depth varying from 1 to 28 metres, and a tremendous variety of coral, fish and other marine species. An important feature of Chole Bay is that the water is continuously exchanged as fresh ocean water flushes in through Kinasi Pass every flood tide. This may be one reason why the extensive coral reef areas in Chole Bay largely survived the calamitous coral bleaching that obliterated corals in most other parts of the Indian Ocean in 1998. This happened when sea temperatures in the Indian Ocean became unusually high due to the “Ël Nino” in 1997-98. As a result, Chole Bay’s coral reefs remained largely intact and even the damaged areas are regenerating well.