Moucha Island

Less than 3 km long, surrounded by the smaller Maskali Island, few islets and a coral reef. All these islands, sometimes called Moucha Islands, are a well known diving site. The Gulf of Tajura is a medium blue, darker than the sky but just by a shade or two with the sea as warm as bath water.  It is about a half hour's ride to the island - a flat, obviously sedimentary atoll, with several sandy beaches.  The ground, where not covered in sand or the sparse vegetation, is made of honey colored rock, studded throughout with embedded shells, impressions of corals and various maritime fauna.

Corals are scattered along a sandy bottom. Both hard and soft corals – brain, staghorn and table corals, gorgonians and sea pens and many more flourished within easy free dive depth. Scattered among the corals are myriad fishes in the riot of colors one expects from the reefs of Hawai’i or Tahiti. Parrot fishes, and Moorish idols, angel fishes and wrasses flitted among the folds and branches of the coral.  In the plains and valleys between the coral communities are bigger fishes – colored like the sandy bottom.