The waters around Zanzibar and Pemba (the sister island) offer divers of all levels (from “discover scuba” diver, through to dive instructors) some of the best diving in the Indian Ocean. There are uninterrupted blue skies and crystal clear waters most of the year, and an amazing diversity of coral reef sites stretching along the whole north, south and east coasts (Zanzibar is after all a coral island).
There are established professional PADI and diving clubs as well as live board boat charters for the most adventurous. The seas around Zanzibar and Pemba offer even the most experienced divers new experiences; frequent whale shark sightings, hammerhead mating grounds in the Pemba channel, swimming with dolphins, giant manta rays, or in a cloud of stingrays. There are also exhilarating drift dives, and coral walls reaching up from apparently bottomless drop offs.
As Zanzibar is still relatively untouched by large scale commercial tourism, the dive sites still offer the abundance of fish and coral life that other areas can no longer hope to sustain. The waters are not over-fished and remain predominantly undisturbed unlike the more crowded areas of the African coast.
SEASONS FOR DIVING
The two best seasons for diving, affording the most suitable conditions both above and below water are either from mid-February until mid-April, or from mid-July until November. The worst seasons are between December and mid-February, and mid-April to mid-July. (Although, diving, visibility, and marine life abundance are, in fact good all year around, there is greater chance of reduced visibility and marine life between these periods, as these are the regular rainy seasons) - see table below.
