Zanzibar Island Activities

There are many places and people offering snorkelling trips, dives and dolphin trips all over the Island, in contrast there is only a handful of operators running safe, controlled ecologically sound trips, we encourage all visitors to use officially licensed centres, this is for your own safety and the future of coral and marine life around Zanzibar Island.
They may charge a little more than the man on the beach with his boat but will provide a safer and better experience.

Click on the map below for more information about activities in each area:

Recommended Zanzibar Island Operators include:
One Ocean, Breezes dive centre, Safariblue, Swahili dive centre.

Diving Zanzibar

Unexplored diving with beautiful coral reef and abundant fish life is what Zanzibar diving areas are about, diving is a relaxed affair normally from converted dhows or especially designed hard hull boats, divers of all levels will enjoy diving in Zanzibar. Zanzibar Island is also a great place to learn to dive or complete your open water, in addition there are centres offering specialty courses in Photography, National Geographic and more.

Diving Zanzibar Photo Gallery

There are four main areas to dive around the Island:

East Coast: Zanzibar diving at its best, with very few people diving the whole southern section there are vast areas of beautiful coral, drop offs, coral heads, soft coral and teeming with life.

Click Here for more information on Activities on East Coast Zanzibar

South West: Like the tourism here very undeveloped with only a couple of centres diving this area, new reefs are being explored all the time, lots of reef with abundant fish life
The presence of dolphins in the area always allows the exciting opportunity of diving with Dolphins.

Click Here for more information on Activities on the South West Coast Zanzibar

Mnemba Island Atoll: For diving in warm high visibility water with vast areas of coral, and innumerable quantities of fish Mnemba Island Atoll is THE place, the large Atoll surrounds the tiny Island of Mnemba and offers many diving areas all busy with life. Very popular for snorkel trips from all over Zanzibar Island it can get quite busy and it is easy to see why, with easy diving conditions and so much to see from beginning to end, a 50 minute dive with safety stop at 5 metres over beds of coral teeming with juvenile life.
Throw in Turtles, Octopus, Frog fish, Crocodile fish, Napoleons, Nudibranks and even the some reef sharks all at 26 – 30degree high vis water and it makes it hard to end the dive. The busiest area for diving on Zanzibar Island so don’t expect to be alone like many of the other areas but it in no way makes the experience any less thrilling.
For Open water courses this is an excellent area.

Click Here for more information on Activities on the Northern Coast of Zanzibar

Stone Town: Not the best diving around the Island but has some wrecks (40metres) and some areas of reef and sand banks worth a dive or two, fishing and boat traffic has reduced both reef and reef life.

Click Here for more information on Activities from Zanzibar Stone Town

Help us preserve Zanzibar's magic

If you are diving or snorkelling, you may be tempted to collect some pretty shells from Zanzibar's many coral reefs. Please do not, as this kills entire reefs, the devastating effects of which can be seen in the well-trodden areas of East African coast. Although there are shell sellers, you are asked not to buy shells from them, as it simply encourages this harmful industry.