Mbudya Island, Dar es Salaam

The largest of the four reserves

Mbudya lies about three kilometres offshore from the northern beaches of Dar es Salaam and is the largest of the city’s four island marine reserves by total protected area. It is uninhabited, it is covered in tropical coastal forest, and it is reached on hotel boats rather than a public shuttle: the reserves’ general management plan names White Sands Hotel as operating the service.

Size, and a figure worth getting right

The general management plan of 2005 gives Mbudya 53 hectares of land, 788.4 hectares of intertidal area and 330.3 hectares of seagrass bed — about 1,172 hectares in all, the largest of the four reserves and more than a third of the 3,044.4 hectares they cover between them. Note the distinction, because it is commonly muddled: Mbudya is the largest reserve, but Bongoyo has more dry land, at 80.5 hectares against Mbudya’s 53. The plan’s own prose describes the same 788.4-hectare figure as reef in one sentence and its table labels it intertidal area; the table is the more careful of the two.

What is there

There are sand beaches on the western and eastern sides, given as 270 metres on the east and 170 metres on the north-west, and these are what the plan itself identifies as the tourist attraction. The upper intertidal is rocky except at those two beaches. On the sheltered west the reef begins at the lower intertidal, and about 10 per cent of the coral on the reef flats is exposed at spring low tides — which is worth knowing before booking a snorkelling trip around a tide table you have not looked at.

A 1997 survey of the fringing reefs found hard coral the dominant category, covering 81.2 per cent of the south-west side. Recorded fish include powder-blue surgeonfish, several butterflyfish, small wrasse, angelfish, sweetlips and groupers. Hawksbill and green turtles are both present. The plan singles Mbudya out as the home of the endangered coconut crab.

It also records ancient graves on Mbudya as a site revered by local communities and used for ritual and sacrifice, visited at night, and says management needs to recognise and make room for that practice. The reserves as a whole hold the ruins of a German outpost and a tomb said to be that of a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, which draws visitors making offerings. These are living religious sites, not ruins to be wandered over: if a guide offers to show you graves here, that is the context.

Going

Boats run from the northern beach hotels. The draw is swimming, snorkelling and a forested island half an hour from a city of several million; see also sandbank and island hopping. There is no accommodation and almost no infrastructure beyond a few bandas, which the plan says visitors have consistently preferred. The reserve charges its own entry on top of the boat.

Common questions