Diving in Tanzania
Are you an experienced diver looking for an exciting new, undiscovered region to explore? Do you love snorkelling and are looking for somewhere to take the next step to Scuba diving? Mikindani offers beginners and advanced divers a truly magical underwater experience with a wide range of sites to suit individual preferences and personal interests. If you’re thinking about diving in Tanzania, Mikindani should be your number one choice for a spectacular subaquatic odyssey exploring outer reef, spur and groove reef, patch reef, deep water pinnacles and channels in small groups for an exclusive, magical experience.
Mikindani – the best place for diving in Tanzania?
Diving takes place in Mikindani Bay and The Mnazi Marine Park. This National Park covers approximately 200km² of sea and estuary and 400km² of land, so protects this stunning stretch of Indian Ocean coastline, coral, marine and wildlife within it. It boasts a wide range of dive sites and is recognised as the centre of biological diversity for the East African coast. Over 400 fish species, rare species of marine life and over 258 species of coral have been identified within the Park.
The Old Boma’s diving partner is eco2 diving, marine research and education centre, also based in Mikindani. They operate a fully equipped PADI scuba dive centre based just 5 minutes walk down the hill from The Old Boma Hotel. They offer eco-aware scuba diving and dive safaris from a fully fitted GRP dive boat that includes all safety equipment and a freshwater shower for washing down camera equipment after a dive.
Sites of interest include:
- Monoliths – these monumental columns and walls rise from depths of over 150m and make the dive descent feel like skydiving. The top of each column is only ten or twelve metres from the surface and home to hard and soft corals, shoals of vibrant reef fish including neon-striped fusiliers, anemones and colourful nudibranchs.
- Cryptomania – this is a macro-photographer’s heaven, Cryptomania’s sandy bottom is home to a multitude of cryptic creatures including pipefish, seahorses, cuttlefish, frogfish, octopus, nudibranchs and flatworms, sea moths and cleverly disguised decorator crabs. Just six to twelve metres below the surface nooks and crannies reveal lobster, cleaner and mantis shrimps, moray, ribbon and snake eels, while pulsating soft corals and tube anemones sway with the Ocean current.
- Pelagic Corner – this dive drops you into an aquatic viewing platform. Schools of barracuda, jacks and trevally can all be seen here and even the occasional reef shark. Coming in to the reef large grouper, turtles and rays all make an appearance. The reef here is low profile but sprinkled with bommies and rocky pinnacles.
- Sea Fan Cliff – arriving at the Sea Fan Cliff dive site is like dropping into another world. The dive begins on the deep edge of the reef where a forest of huge sea fans stretch into the distance. In the deep you might spot the occasional shark and shoals of pelagic, while moving up the reef into shallower water, large grouper, snappers, emperors and Napoleon wrasse are often seen. Cliffs in the corals offer cover to moray eels and stingrays and when reaching each new crest in the reef you’re to meet turtles grazing in amongst the spectacular coral gardens.
As if all this wan’t enough, you’ll have each dive site to yourself, we guarantee you won’t bump into any other dive groups as eco2 are the original and only dive centre in the region.
Look out for our new range of diving holiday packages and excursions created in association with the dive experts at eco2 that we’ll be announcing very soon.