Diving in Mozambique

One thing that we were to learn about diving in Tofo is that the conditions can change very quickly. Visibility can vary from ten to thirty meters from day to day, with an average of ten to fifteen meters. Currents can be very strong and winds and surface conditions can make the diving here moderately challenging at times. With shore launches in occasionally rough conditions and drops on GPS marks with negatively buoyant entries, diving in Tofo is best enjoyed by experienced divers. This is adventure diving at its finest and the pay-off is worth it!

We arrived at the dive shop the next morning looking forward to our first full day of diving with great anticipation. Our plan was to do two dives without coming back to shore, with our first dive being on Giant’s Castle, 3 km off-shore in the bay, and our second dive back on Manta Reef, 12 km south down the coast. Our trip to and from Manta Reef would take us through the “whale shark zone” again and we were told that with the current conditions, we could expect as many, if not more, Mantas at Giant’s Castle than at Manta Reef, and little to no difficulty in finding Whale Sharks

As we dropped off the Zodiac and began our descent to the reef at 30 meters, the first thing we noticed was that the visibility had indeed improved significantly. The second thing we noticed was Manta Rays nearly everywhere we looked. Like Manta Reef, Giant’s Castle has multiple cleaning stations, and following the instructions from our briefing on how to best dive with Mantas, we were able to approach to within a few meters as the Mantas glided over the soft corals. We could clearly see multitudes of Butterfly Fish, Sergeant Majors and Cleaner Wrasse, coming up of the corals, with each focusing on a specific area of the Mantas for cleaning. We drifted along the reef in the current, occasionally having our attention drawn away from the Mantas by an amazing array of reef life – with Frogfish and Ribbon Eels to be found on the reef and vast schools of Kingfish circling above us.

We hardly had time to let it all sink in before we were back in “whale shark zone”! Roy had told us at the start of the day that with calm conditions on the surface and a cloudless sky, the conditions were ideal for spotting Whale Sharks. Unlike some Whale Shark destinations, like Ningalou Reef in Australia, where spotter planes are used to find Whale Sharks, “spotting” Whale Sharks in Tofo requires little more than two people in the front of boat scanning the water for the tell-tale shadow or a tail fin breaking the surface. It was almost too easy!

After a couple more Whale Sharks on the way to Manta Reef, another stunning dive with more than 10 Mantas, and another Whale Shark on the way back, we needed the rest of the afternoon just to go through our photos. This was to be the norm, not the exception, for the week. And what we were to learn about the area during our stay was to give us an even greater appreciation of how unique it truly was.