Bongoyo Island, Dar es Salaam

The island most people mean

Bongoyo is the most visited of the four island marine reserves off Dar es Salaam, and when a city itinerary says “island day trip” this is almost always the island. It is uninhabited, it has the largest land area of the four, and it is the one with regular scheduled boats: the reserves’ general management plan names the Msasani Slipway as offering regular shuttles to Bongoyo, and to Bongoyo only.

What the plan records

The Dar es Salaam Marine Reserves general management plan, adopted in 2005, is the only substantial published account of these islands — the Marine Parks and Reserves Unit’s own web page for the reserves currently carries no information at all. It gives Bongoyo 80.5 hectares of land, 388.5 hectares of intertidal area and 284.8 hectares of seagrass bed. The island is narrow at the south-east and broadens to the north-west. There are two small sand beaches, described as 500 metres on the east side and 300 metres on the north-west, with coral-based rocky flats between them. Mean tidal range is about three metres.

Live coral cover is high, above 35 per cent, on the sheltered western and north-western sides, and generally under 5 per cent on the east and south. That single fact should decide where a snorkelling boat drops you. Recorded reef and seagrass fish include butterflyfish, sweetlips and groupers; the intertidal holds sea urchins, giant clams, octopus, cowries, starfish, hermit crabs and sea cucumbers. Hawksbill and green turtles both nest, and the plan lists nest poaching, seine-net entanglement and inundation of nests laid below the high-water mark among the threats to them.

The plan also records a shark lagoon on Bongoyo which it says hosts seasonal visits of juvenile sharks in an area that is a nursery ground for octopus, squid and fish, and it notes seahorses on the seagrass beds. None of that is a guarantee of a sighting on any given morning.

The vegetation is East African coastal forest, and the plan is specific that several of its species — including Sideroxylon inerme, Manilkara sulcata and Mimusops fruticosa — are the most degraded on the island through cutting for fuel and building.

Two figures that disagree

The same plan places the reserves as a group 26 kilometres from the city centre, and in its section on Bongoyo specifically says the island lies about 8 kilometres north of Dar es Salaam. Both figures are in the same document. The practical answer is that the crossing from the Msasani peninsula is short, and the boat operators set the schedule.

Going

Swimming and snorkelling over the reef flats are the point, with island hopping when the tide suits. There is no accommodation; the plan describes the infrastructure as a few bandas and notes that visitors have consistently approved of the islands being left undeveloped. Take water and shade. The reserves charge their own entry, collected separately from the boat.

Common questions