Sea safety has always been a top priority for us at Scuba Do Zanzibar. Through our close relationship with the British High Commission in Tanzania, and in particular the consular section; we shared our concerns regarding the need for an awareness campaign. This campaign focused on the importance of individuals to take responsibility to ensure any vessel they board has adequate safety equipment and procedures in place. Whether boarding a passenger ferry or tourism boat, there must be lifejackets, communication equipment, preferably two engines incase one fails, first aid equipment,etc. The British High Commission sponsored the Sea Safe Campaign by producing a video, presentation and brocures to be distributed and the campaign was launched onboard the HMS Sutherland on 26th October 2012. This campaign later merged into the Know the Ropes campaign.

On this sad day we were woken up by a phone call at two thirty in the morning alerting us that there was a problem at sea. We gathered up our available crew and launched two boats within half an hour of receiving the alert call. The remaining team members stayed behind and established a communication center in the dive base between all the boats that had joined the rescue effort.

Just before first light our friends from Whirlwind aviation called the dive base and told us they were joining the search and rescue effort and were asking for directions to start searching as their helicopter would be over them in the next 10 minutes. Just as it was getting light, a message was received that a helicopter was joining in on the search was received by the volunteer search and rescue boats out to sea. The boats heard the helicopter long before they saw it flying a search pattern between Pemba and Zanzibar and knew it had found survivors when it was hovering around like a dragonfly flashing its lights.

At the end of the day we were able to help many survivors out of the water and on to the waiting ferries and we are proud of our crews effort and bravery. We also remember the many who didn’t survive on that sad day.

Six months after the Spice Islander ferry went down in the Pemba Channel, we received a call from a neighbouring fishing community claiming the boat had resurfaced. While knowing that would not be possible, there was partially sunken vessel floating in the channel very near to the location where the Spice Islander went down. After discussions with our Ports Authority, they requested our assistance at the location of the shipwreck.

The location was quite far offshore and we found the wreckage of a longline Chinese fishing vessel. Despite the fishermen warning us of sharks in the water circling the wreck, we entered the water in order to photograph the ship's identification number and have a further look. After all, as divers we love sharks and know their importance as the apex predators in our oceans! We did enjoy seeing one rather large shark which South African shark experts identified as a Dusky Shark (in the photo above).

While this investigation was costly in terms of fuel, it was beneficial to our team who were part of the rescue and lifesaving efforts during the ferry disaster to get closure and reassure the fisherman that the Spice Islander had not resurfaced.

Our crew are not only trained with operating the hyperbaric chamber, but are quick to volunteer to assist injured divers, whether local fishermen or recreational divers. The hyperbaric chamber in Zanzibar is the only chamber in Tanzania as well as the whole of East Africa, with the exception of a Kenyan Navy Chamber in Mombasa.

Zanzibar kicked off a seismic oil exploration exercise (see news article link below) operated by RAKGAS and the BGP Explorer. While this was launched as a deep-water survey, their transect lines came very close to shore and passed over numerous scuba diving sites in water as shallow is 14m depth. After a couple incidents involving conflicts between the BGP Explorer and tourism activities, an urgent stakeholder meeting was called in which the operator claimed they were unaware of tourism activities in the area around Zanzibar.

As activists for safety of our guests and our crew, we researched the safe distances for divers to be from seismic activity. Our instructor and dive medic spent the better part of this month-long exercise following the vessels and alerting all tourism operators in the areas they were planning to be shooting. It was a very challenging excercise as there were multiple break downs in communication between the vessel and the manager of the operation and often the shooting plans would change with no notice. Fortunately, no one was injured and hopefully there were many lessons learned on behalf of the operator during this exercise.