Mafia Island

About Mafia Island

Mafia Island is a tranquil and largely undeveloped tropical island lying approximately 130 kilometres south of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, surrounded by the Mafia Island Marine Park. It is Africa’s first protected marine park and one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems in the entire western Indian Ocean. The marine park’s pristine coral gardens, seagrass beds, mangrove forests and open channel waters support extraordinary concentrations of marine life including sea turtles, dolphins, whale sharks, manta rays, dugongs and over 460 fish species recorded within its boundaries. Mafia is one of the world’s premier destinations for swimming with whale sharks, which gather in the channel waters between October and March in reliably large numbers. The island’s 40,000 residents live in traditional Swahili fishing villages whose dhow-building and fishing traditions remain largely unchanged and the very limited tourism infrastructure. A small number of boutique eco-lodges ensures Mafia retains a genuinely unspoiled and intimate character that other islands may have lost long ago.