Somewhere in the seagrass channels of the Bazaruto Archipelago, off southern Mozambique, an animal is grazing that has vanished from almost every other stretch of the East African coast. The dugong — a shy, slow marine mammal, cousin to the manatee and, distantly, the elephant — once ranged from the Red Sea to South Africa in herds large enough that sailors mistook them for mermaids. Today, along thousands of kilometres of East African coastline, there is exactly one place left where the population is still considered viable: Bazaruto.
The numbers are stark. The IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force estimates 250–350 dugongs remain in the waters of the Bazaruto Archipelago and Inhambane Bay — and classifies the area as the last stronghold of the species on the East African seaboard. Kenya’s dugongs are functionally gone. Tanzania’s are down to scattered individuals. Madagascar’s are in steep decline. What survives at Bazaruto is not a remnant; it is the population — the one from which any future recovery on this coast would have to come.
The channels they graze are not remote, either. They are the same ones the day boats from Vilanculos cross on the way to the islands — and for a Bazaruto Archipelago day trip that treats the crossing as part of the point, EKAYA, a locally-owned operator in Vilanculos, eases its engine to idle over the seagrass and spends ten minutes drifting quietly with everyone watching the water — patient, respectful, exactly as the park asks.
Why here, of all places
The answer is partly geography and partly governance. The five islands of the archipelago — Bazaruto, Benguerra, Magaruque, Santa Carolina, and tiny Bangué — shelter a shallow, sandy lagoon system where seagrass meadows grow thick in water warm enough and calm enough for an animal that must surface to breathe and spends its life grazing. Dugongs eat seagrass and almost nothing else; where the meadows go, the dugongs go.
The governance part began in 1971, when Mozambique declared the Bazaruto Archipelago a national marine park — explicitly to protect the dugong and nesting sea turtles, making it one of the oldest marine protected areas in Africa. Since 2017 the park has been co-managed by Mozambique’s national conservation agency, ANAC, and the non-profit African Parks, which has put patrol boats on the water and rangers on the beaches across the park’s 143,000 hectares. In 2018 the whole area was designated an Important Marine Mammal Area — in large part because of the dugongs.
The threats have not disappeared. Gill nets, set for fish, drown dugongs that cannot reach the surface; a slow-breeding species that produces one calf every few years cannot absorb many such losses. But inside the park, the combination of patrols, community engagement, and fee-funded conservation has held the line in a way almost nowhere else on this coast has managed.
What it takes to see one
Almost nobody does — and that is worth being honest about. Dugongs are wary, they surface briefly, and they feed over seagrass beds away from engine noise. But the odds at Bazaruto are the best in East Africa, and they are best on calm, clear mornings between May and October, over the shallow meadows between Benguerra Island and the mainland, on a falling tide.
Out on the water the ritual is simple: the boat slows, the engine drops to idle, and for ten minutes everyone watches the seagrass. Most days the channel gives you dolphins and turtles instead. Some days it gives you a grey back and a round snout breaking the surface for two seconds, and you realise you have just seen one of the rarest large animals in the Indian Ocean.
The dugongs of Bazaruto are a conservation story still being written — a species that has already disappeared from most of its East African range, holding on in one archipelago where the seagrass is still thick and someone is still watching. The park fee every visitor pays goes directly into keeping it that way. Few places on earth offer a clearer case that protection, started early and kept up for fifty years, works.
Sources: IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force (Bazaruto Archipelago & Inhambane Bay IMMA fact sheet); African Parks, Bazaruto Archipelago National Park.