mafia or other island?
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Hi
We went to Mafia island in December 2017. Stayed and dived with "Big Blu" - organization of the diving was amazing, the lodging was fine. Food could take long (a plate of fries took 1,5 hours to arrive), but this was also the case other places on the island.
Right next to the dive center is a good muck diving spot - we had 2-3 dives there and saw a lot. Maybe not as much as in Lembeh - but the water was warmer.
The other dive sites was not that impressive - but not bad either. I remember one other diver had just stayed a Pemba island and liked it a bit more.
We went to Mafia island in December 2017. Stayed and dived with "Big Blu" - organization of the diving was amazing, the lodging was fine. Food could take long (a plate of fries took 1,5 hours to arrive), but this was also the case other places on the island.
Right next to the dive center is a good muck diving spot - we had 2-3 dives there and saw a lot. Maybe not as much as in Lembeh - but the water was warmer.
The other dive sites was not that impressive - but not bad either. I remember one other diver had just stayed a Pemba island and liked it a bit more.
http://www.mafiadiving.com/
mafia island scuba diving - Google Search
Your inquiry peaked my interested. I have never been there or even knew anything about Mafia Island. It seems that currents and tides are a big thing there and one has to coordinate when and where they dive with the tidal change/tidal currents.
I'd love to know more about the quality and variety of the diving there.
mafia island scuba diving - Google Search
Your inquiry peaked my interested. I have never been there or even knew anything about Mafia Island. It seems that currents and tides are a big thing there and one has to coordinate when and where they dive with the tidal change/tidal currents.
I'd love to know more about the quality and variety of the diving there.
Sent you a pm. All depends what you call big fish, but there are barracuda schools, trevally schools, tuna and other big game fish. But Pemba also has walls plunging down in the depth, and reefs that jut up in the inlets, "gaps", from the deep and are awashed with deep sea water from the Pemba Channel (1000 m deep). So even if Zanzibar/Mafia and Pemba are close to each other, they are very different. Pemba sits outside the continental shelf in deep water. The other two sits on the continental shelf in shallow water. Like Sipadan compared to other nearby islands in Borneo/Sabah. This has a great influence on coral growth and adjacent marine life. Pemba diving very influenced by tide and currents rip, making diving a pretty advanced affair, giving you a very short diving window each day. For the record I am not that interested in Muck and if I was, I would probably look elsewhere ... however times being what they are, this corner of the Indian Ocean actually has a pretty impressive bio diversity, allegedly better than e.g. the Maldives or the Andaman Sea. Good luck.
Sorry for not writing earlier.
Our dive guide in Mafia island was way better at spotting than the one we had in Lembeh. We also found a lot of stuff ourselves.
The water was really murky, so if you were just 2-3 m apart you couldn’t see your buddy, but since it was only 4-6 m depth we could always meet on the surface (or go up and find the bubbles).
As far as I remember it was 2 dives with the boat going to the “outside” - usually in the morning, but some days we started very early and some days it was later. As someone else mentioned tides play a huge part in when and where we could dive.
I think we did afternoon dives 3 days, so on those days we had 3 dives, rest was only 2.
Due to tides it was not possible to do any night dives the 6 days we were there.
As I said, I really liked the muck diving in Mafia, outside Indonesia it’s probably one of the best spots for it.
Beside tides dictacting when it’s most favorable to dive, there are two distinct seasons, the Kazkasi and the Kusi caused by trade winds and the East African current that brings in water and life all the way from the other side of the Indian Ocean. High season is the Kaskazi (the Northest) from medio/late Nov til April —water gets warmer and clearer. Good diving can of course be had at any time with some luck, but outside that period chances for "cold", green, low viz conditions are more likely. Inme good intimate local knowledge about the diving is very important for a good experience (down to the hour a place should be dived—which varies per tide and sesson). Pemba not unusual to have 40 meter vis in season on incoming tide.
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