Mafia Island whale sharks

What is Mafia Island?

Mafia is a Tanzanian island of 435 square kilometers, 49 kilometers long and 17 wide, lying off the Rufiji delta, a 30-minute flight south of Dar es Salaam. It has nothing to do with Sicily: its name probably comes from Arabic or Swahili, and its people call it Chole Shamba. Kilindoni, on the west coast, is its main town, with the port, the airstrip, the market and the beach the whale shark boats leave from. To the east, Chole Bay holds the dive lodges and the entrance to the marine park, the first in Tanzania, created in 1995 over 822 square kilometers. There are no big beaches or big hotels: Mafia gets fewer than a thousand visitors a year, and it is a fishing island that lives by the tides. You come for the whale sharks from October to March, for diving in Chole Bay all year, and for both on the same trip.

Why do whale sharks stay at Mafia Island all year?

Almost everywhere in the world, whale sharks only pass through: they follow the plankton and disappear after a few weeks. At Mafia, they stay. The research program launched in 2012 by the Marine Megafauna Foundation with WWF Tanzania, the Tanzanian fisheries institute and KAUST university first counted 87 individuals between October 2012 and March 2013, measuring 4.1 to 9.7 meters, almost all immature. When surface sightings stopped in March, acoustic tags still detected three quarters of the tagged sharks in the channel. Eight years of photo-identification have brought the catalog to some 200 individuals, and 51 sharks have been tracked with tags, a quarter of the population. This site fidelity makes the animals easy to find, but also vulnerable to whatever happens at Mafia: nets, collisions, disturbance. That is why operators have organized into a network, WATONET, with WWF, around a shared code of conduct. Since 2012, numbers have more than doubled.

How does a Mafia Island whale shark trip work, hour by hour?

The boat picks you up at your hotel early in the morning; at Kitu Kiblu, departure is from the camp, after breakfast and a briefing on shark biology and the code of conduct. The dhow or motorboat follows the coast west for ten minutes, then everyone looks for fins and dark shadows under the surface. When a shark is spotted, the boat moves alongside it, engine idling, and swimmers slip into the water in small groups, gently, without jumping. You swim alongside the animal, 3 meters away, at its pace, which stays slow as long as it is not disturbed; never pass in front of its mouth or over its back, and never touch it. The encounter lasts as long as the shark stays at the surface, a few minutes or half an hour. Back at camp around noon: debriefing, shower. When several boats are on the same animal, the guide waits their turn: that is the sign of a serious operator.

Why can't you scuba dive with the Mafia Island whale sharks?

The question comes up at every briefing. The Mafia whale sharks feed at the surface, in the top meter of water, and a scuba diver would be in the wrong place: below them, in plankton-heavy water where you cannot see 10 meters, with bubbles that make them dive. The code of conduct also bans tanks in the area, as at Isla Mujeres in Mexico or Donsol in the Philippines. Snorkeling is simpler, more respectful and, in this green water, far more effective. Those who want to see the species on scuba will find it elsewhere: in South Ari Atoll, in the Maldives, or at Richelieu Rock, in Thailand, where whale sharks pass along the walls in clear water. Mafia offers the surest and most regular encounter in the western Indian Ocean, ten minutes from a village beach.