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Africa Guide - Tanzania
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Top 10 reasons to visit Tanzania in Africa
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Tell us about your African experience in
Tanzania - write a Tanzania travel story or review
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Mafia Marine Park
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Mafia Island is a prominent world-class diving destination with some of the richest reefs in the world, with a supreme variety of hard and soft corals and diversity of tropical fish. Extraordinary dive sites at Mafia offering shallow reefs of colossal beauty and richness, bommies, channels, walls and caves.
Chole Bay has a variety of excellent dives within the Bay that is accessible in almost any weather. Visibility varies with the wind and tides, and is generally poor on outgoing tides as there is the normal accumulation of organic and granular matter in the water. The diving is dependent on the tides, and also to avoid strong currents at the dive sites, which are close to the mouth of the Bay (Kinasi Pass). Diving is done on the full low, full high or on the incoming tide for the Kinasi Pass drift dive and the Chole and Kinsai walls. Diving outside the Bay is subject to weather conditions and tides, as it can be dangerous to negotiate Kinasi Pass on an outgoing tide; however, once outside the Bay the dives are not tide dependent.
Mafia's best diving is at depths of less than 30m so it is a sport diver's paradise. The reefs of the archipelago offer a spectacularly beautiful and assorted display of marine life. The excellent condition and high variety of the reefs stimulated the creation of Mafia Island Marine Park, Tanzania's first marine park. Examples of most kinds of tropical marine habitat occur here, including exposed fringing reefs, rock walls, soft coral and algae-dominated reefs. The diversity of animal and plant life is hard to match, with over 50 genera of corals and 400 species of fish so far identified; There are excellent examples of giant table corals, delicate seafans, whip corals, and huge stands of blue-tipped staghorn corals. Large predatory fish and turtles are common and surprisingly unaffected by approaching divers.
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View Mafia Island Hotels
Book Mafia Island Hotels
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Have you snorkeled or dived in Mafia Marine Park? If so, please submit your review
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Tell a friend about snorkeling or diving in Mafia Marine Park
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