Scuba Diving Mnemba Island Day 1, Zanzibar

  After a wonderful night listening to the sound of waves outside our open air bandas everyone awoke excited for our first full day on Mnemba island. A stay here comes with two scuba dives daily included in the price. They also offer different PADI level scuba classes which some of the group was going to do. So after devouring a delicious breakfast which magically showed up on my front deck, I went off to the boat house to meet up with the group.

Pipefish
  Jack, Fiona and myself were all headed out for a fun dive in the morning and another right after. Mary, John, and Maggie were all going to do a refresher dive and then dive with us for the second dive. And Moira was going to do a discover scuba course since she is not certified...yet.

  For most of the group this was their first time taking a dip in the Indian Ocean. We went to Little Wall and Cabbage Reef and had a couple of wonderful dives. The critter hunting was nonstop as we came across cool finds like pipefish, nudibranchs, scorpionfish, crocodile fish, and moray eels. There were patches of sand where droves of garden eels waved to and fro and at a much shallower depth than in Hawaii. And Jack even found a white tip reef shark hiding in a little cave about 65ft down.

Nudibranch
Fire Dartfish
  One of the beautiful things about staying on Mnemba island was that we could easily jet back there in between dives. All the other dive boats we saw came out from Zanzibar, some over an hour away just to dive the reef at Mnemba, as it is the best around. Everyone was so excited after their first dive that we chose to head right back out for a second.

Camouflaging Scorpionfish
  For this dive the whole group stayed together for more critter finding action. Huge schools of anthias covered the coral heads while different species of anemonefish hid out in their protective homes. We passed some giant clams and more eels to wrap up two wonderful dives.

Giant Clam
Skunk Anemone fish
  Now this meant we could unwind for the rest of the day and truly kick up our feet, island style.

Dai Mar, Fiona, and Jack



Mary and Andy


Nudibranch find by Jack
Rarely seen shark at Little Reef




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Secret Maui Waterfall

Search for Chameleons, Maui

Vermont Summer and Stave Island