Misali Island

Why is Misali called the prayer mat island?

Misali, 2 kilometers by 800 meters, sits 10 kilometers west of Chake Chake, in the Pemba Channel. Its name comes from the Swahili for prayer mat: legend has it that a prophet with no mat declared that the island would serve as one, and its northern beach does indeed face Mecca. This sacred character is what protected it. In the 1990s, fishers from neighboring villages were blasting the reef with dynamite; conservation groups then worked with the imams, who reminded people in their sermons that wasting creation is forbidden. The Misali conservation area was created in 1998, then folded into the Pemba Channel Conservation Area. Since then, a third of the reef has been closed to fishing, village rangers patrol every day, and the US$10 each visitor pays funds the patrols, beehives, seaweed farms and more than 10,000 mangroves replanted on the nearby coasts.

What are the two dives at Misali Island like?

The first dive is on the channel side, at Coral Mountain. The boat moors on the top of the wall, at 5 meters; you descend the gentle slope covered in table corals to the drop-off, around 20 meters, then follow the wall that plunges toward an 80-meter bottom, staying between 15 and 30. Potato groupers sit under the overhangs, turtles on the sponges, Napoleon wrasse and trevallies in the blue, and rays on the tongues of sand. The second dive is on the sheltered side, at Coral Garden or the gardens that start at the beach: 4 to 20 meters, schools of surgeonfish, snappers and fusiliers, moray eels, octopus, spiny lobsters under the coral heads and giant clams in the rock. This is where Open Water divers and snorkelers get the most out of the island, in water so clear you can see the bottom from the boat.

Should you dive Misali or the Pemba channels?

Pemba offers two styles of diving. The Fundo and Njao channels, off Wete, are vertical current dives for Advanced divers, with the big fish in the blue. Misali is the island's other face: topography and current at Coral Mountain, but also calm, shallow, bright gardens where a beginner or a photographer can spend an hour without noticing the time. The southwest lodges go there every day; the northern ones schedule it once per stay, as a full day with a picnic on the beach. If you only dive one day in Pemba, Misali is the safest choice: conditions there are the easiest and visibility the most consistent. If you stay a week, alternate between the island and the channels.