The Bazaruto Archipelago shelters the last dugongs of East Africa. Aerial surveys flown between 2017 and 2021 counted roughly 325 of these shy sea cows over its seagrass meadows, the only population left in the western Indian Ocean believed large enough to sustain itself. The five islands they feed around are made of sand rather than rock, heaped by the wind into dunes that reach about 90 metres along Bazaruto's eastern shore. Most people meet the place from the air first. The water reads as bands of jade, milk and deep blue, and as the tide falls the sandbanks surface as long white ribbons with nothing on them but bird tracks.
Climb a dune ridge on Bazaruto and the ocean lies on one side, while inland there are freshwater lakes with basking crocodiles and wading flamingos. Offshore, Two Mile Reef draws snorkellers into water clear enough to read the reef from the surface. This is also the only place in the western Indian Ocean where all five of the region's sea turtle species come ashore to nest. Mozambique declared the archipelago its first marine national park in 1971, and the protected area now covers 1,430 square kilometres of islands, reefs and shallows. Since 2017 the government has run it together with the conservation group African Parks. Roughly 6,500 people live on three of the islands and fish these same shallows. The park's main job now is to let those families keep fishing while the dugongs, and the seagrass they feed on, survive in the same water.