East Africa’s latest ‘artificial’ reef, set in the watery heart of the Mombasa Marine Park, barely 1.5km off the Kenyan port city, has been in place now for more than 4 years.
The artificial reef has its origins in the deliberate sinking-on 27th October 2002- of a 77 meter decommissioned livestock carrier, the MV Dania, at a pre-designated site 50 meters beyond the naturally occurring reef off Mombasa’s Bamburi Beach.
The scuttling operation of the ship wreck, when eventually it went ahead, was the culminating act of ten months of painstaking planning and preparation in Mombasa.
The MV Dania was built at Norway’s Hatlo Verksted shipyard in 1965 as a general cargo vessel. She was then registered in Honduras, Central America, as the MV Rodriguez. In 1985, she started plying the trade routes between Eastern Africa and the Arabian Gulf. And finally, in 1993, she was converted into a specialized livestock carrier for the ferrying of cattle to and from Mozambique, South Africa, Mombasa and Mauritius.
On being decommissioned in 2001, due to low livestock traffic, MV Dania was to have been retired to India. The Owner of Buccaneer Diving IN Mombasa- Bruce, operating out of the nearby Voyager and White sands Hotels had other ideas. Buccaneer is Mombasa’s only IDC-PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors)-accredited five-star Instructors Development Centre.
The el Niño rains had wrecked havoc on the natural coral gardens in Mombasa which were previously a divers paradise. Conservation efforts have now resorted to the development of artificial reefs using wrecks of various kinds, and also to add flavor and diversity to the diving fraternity.
The coral communities that have developed on the ship wreck overtime are as productive and diverse as ecosystems that you find in other healthy naturally occurring coral reefs. Having an alternative artificial wreck reef off Mombasa will help divert the human pressure away from the fragile remaining natural reefs, while at the same time providing added tourist attraction into the wreck divers’ bargain.
On the D-day, the vessel was towed out to sea for the last time from her moorings at Comarco Marine Base at Ganjoni, Mombasa. Two hours later Capt. Bahero maneuvered her into a scuttling position in the Mombasa Marine Park. The crew began pumping water into her bowels, which sank lower and lower in the water until- through the rows of pre-cut holes in her flanks-she began to take in water by herself. Her stern was the last to dip beneath the waves, squeezing out the last remaining pockets of trapped air in a dramatic final exhalation.
On sinking of the diving wreck, divers set in place prominent ‘danger’ buoy, flanked by other ‘cautionary buoys positioned afore and aft of the ship wreck. These buoys provide a clear warning to approaching shipping, while also facilitating tie-up moorings for parties of Mombasa’s diving visitors.
The divers have since mapped out a number of recommended dive routes on and around the ship wreck. These have been color coded according to the respective levels of difficulty they involve, so as to reflect the varying degrees of diving skill required.
Quite apart from its attraction as a premier new wreck diving site in Mombasa, the ship wreck of the MV Dania is already serving, as a very useful underwater laboratory for a number of the Kenya Wildlife Service research projects and divers teaching programmes.
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