The island you do not land on
Pangavini is the smallest of the four island marine reserves off Dar es Salaam and the one nobody visits. The reserves’ general management plan describes it as a coral-rag island surrounded by steep cliffs that make it inaccessible, states plainly that the islet has no beaches, and records that visitors generally do not land there. If the name is on an itinerary you have been sent, that is worth knowing before you plan a day around it.
It is also the closest of the four to the mainland — separated from the shore, the plan says, by a channel only 1.5 kilometres wide — which is why it appears in descriptions of the city’s coastline more often than its accessibility warrants.
What it is for
Pangavini’s value is as a sanctuary rather than a destination, and the plan is unusually lyrical about it. It calls the island the nocturnal home of most of the birds that fly over Dar es Salaam during the day, and a nesting sanctuary for them; the reserves as a whole also serve as a stopover for migratory birds. It is an important breeding, resting and feeding site for birds, reptiles — snakes and lizards — rats and insects including butterflies, and the plan attributes that directly to the cliffs, which it says have protected the island from human disturbance.
Its total area is 175.8 hectares, of which only 3.7 hectares is land, 67.8 hectares reef and 104.3 hectares seagrass bed. The reef is patchy and has no well-defined slope. Recorded coral cover across most of the subtidal area was 5 to 35 per cent at the last survey the plan cites, with patches above 35 per cent on the west and north-east.
The coral record, which is the honest part
The plan sets out what happened to this reef and does not soften it. Live hard coral cover on the south-west fell from 78.2 per cent in 1998 to 57.1 per cent in 1999 after bleaching, and it records that recovery since has been poor. The species composition changed drastically, from an abundance of branching Acropora in 1997 to Montipora aequituberculata, with strong wave action on the north-west side compounding the bleaching. A survey of the fringing reef found most of it consisted of coral rubble covered in turf algae, dead coral, seagrass and sand, with good hard coral growth only in patches.
That is the clearest published picture of what a bleaching event did to a reef on this coast, and it is the reason the reserves exist. The subject is treated more widely in the guide to conservation tours.
Common questions
Can you visit Pangavini?
Not in the ordinary sense. It has no beaches and is ringed by cliffs, and the reserves’ own plan says visitors do not land. Boats pass it; that is the visit.
Is the snorkelling good?
The published record describes a patchy reef with poor recovery from bleaching. The city island reserves where the boats actually go, Bongoyo and Mbudya, have higher coral cover.
Why is it listed as an attraction at all?
Because it is one of the four gazetted reserves and its name circulates with the others. It is a bird and reptile sanctuary that happens to be inside a city boundary, and that is a better reason to know about it than to go.