Approached from under the water, Mombasa’s newest ship wreck-that of MV Dania, a 77- meter decommissioned livestock carrier that was scuttled 4 years ago and now lies 30 meters (almost 100 feet) under, on the sandy bed of the Mombasa Marine Park, just 1.5 km off the Kenyan port city’s Bamburi Beach-is certainly an awesome sight: a huge, dark, looming, shadowy hulk, already teeming with marine life.

Diving in dark corners with strange tenants

Go in through the open hatches, and- in your touch beam, darting out from dark nooks and recesses-as you wriggle and swim along covered passage ways, on past portholes (which produce a curious suction effect), into and out of murky cabins, and down crumbling stair wells to the eerie lower decks, come a multiplicity of creature-tenants, big and small. It can be heart stopping, even with prior warning, to be amidships with scatters of hither-and tittering Lyre tail Anthias, tiny orange yellow slivers against blue in the torch light, when-lo, from a cabin doorway-juts first the monstrous dark jaw, and then the head, of a massive Malabar Grouper.

We got you in our sights

Still more disconcertingly, at least to begin with, the roused grouper- all of a meter long and weighing perhaps 130 kilos-proceeds, emerging out into the light, to follow you down the passageway. But groupers are gentle giants that feed mainly at night, generally on small fishes and crustaceans. So, for them, the wreck’s inner chambers are the perfect daytime rest rooms. These fish are jealously territorial and so always like to keep an eye on what intruding divers might be up to on their wreck.

There are, as it turns out, several other Groupers in residence inside the wreck. And some, the potato groupers especially, which also tail trespassing human divers, are splendidly camouflaged for lying in wait to ambush prey out among the corals. The wreck of MV Dania is also home to various Jacks, as well as to Glassfish, lobsters, octopuses, starfish, and tube-worms. Look carefully, and you may also see-lurking in dark corners, quietly fanning their bizarre ‘manes’ of spiny fins- some of the wreck’s resident Lion fish.

And schools of others

Whole schools of other fish species have taken to using the wreck as a stopover on their travels. For a time, even cornet fish could be seen hovering daily, almost motionless, over the rails on the upper deck. Lean and very streamlined, these fish have attenuated, tubular snouts for sucking in their prey of small crustaceans. So, for whole shoals of very young fry, notably those of barracudas, the wreck’s sheltered inner reaches, inaccessible to most large predators, are serving as a welcome new nursery.

Wreck’s changing tenancy

The particular thrill, for divers, is one of never quite knowing-from one day to the next-just what species might show up on board the sunken ship. For the colonization process is now in full swing, and the composition of fish and marine organisms on the wreck is changing continually. Some new arrivals promptly settle here and breed. Others, on being seen off, are very quickly replaced. And while some species may stick around for a few days, even weeks others, just passing through, are-literally- here today, gone tomorrow…

The wreck of the MV Dania is much more than simply a fascinating diving site, however. It represents an entire new marine habitat-in –the-making. Lying just 50 meters outside an existing coral reef, such a wreck presents a significant additional area where in various corals and other sessile animals and plants can settle-and, by so doing, help to expand the recovering natural coral reef system.

East Africa’s premier artificial steel reef

The Mombasa ship wreck, then, which is already beginning to break up, is well on its way to becoming East Africa’s first artificial reef. It was precisely to this end that- on 27 October 2002, after ten months of painstaking planning and preparation- the vessel was scuttled in the first place.

The scuttling project was conceived as a ‘direct conservation response’ to the alarming decline seen over recent years in the once-bountiful coral reef habitats off the Kenyan coast.

This sorry decline became especially pronounced in the wake of the el Niño phenomenon experienced in 1998, when the ravages of unprecedented coral bleaching accounted for a staggering 60% to 80% of all the corals off the Kenyan coast.

Recreational divers love the ship wreck

There is compelling new evidence showing that recreational divers not only adapt quickly to artificial reefs, but also that they very often prefer such reefs to natural reefs. This presents the prospect of securing increased foreign exchange earnings for local communities, while at the same time booting the profile of the diving industry-and indeed of ecotourism as a whole.

The artificial reef taking shape within Kenya’s Mombasa Marine park not only provides welcome new habitats for a myriad of threatened reef dwelling creatures, a ‘blank canvas’ for academic study, a new haven for scuba divers, and the prospect of additional revenue for the tourism industry; it is also the local community’s precious chance to give something back to nature-before its too late.