Dive Systems Malta

Family-run since 1978, about 48 years as of 2026, Dive Systems Malta is, by its own account, the largest dive centre on the island, based at the water's edge in Exiles Bay, Sliema. Paul is company president, Simon director of diving, Claude handles sales and marketing, and Alexia reservations. In early 2025 the centre rebranded its main training-agency badge. It is now an SSI Diamond Dive Centre and SSI Instructor Training Centre, SSI's highest recognised tier, while PADI TecRec technical courses continue to run there as well. It is also a founding member of Malta's Professional Diving School Association.

Most of the wreck circuit around the island is shore access rather than a boat trip: HMS Maori, P29, Rozi, Um El Faroud and Tug 2 are all dived from land, alongside reef sites such as Ghar Lapsi, Anchor Bay and Qawra Point. The boat "Simo", carrying up to 14 divers plus 2 instructors or guides, covers the deeper wrecks instead: Bristol Beaufighter, HMS Hellespont, the Blenheim Bomber and Filfla, plus further reef and wreck sites in Gozo and Comino.

Technical divers get a full ladder too, with SSI Extended Range and TDI pathways running from foundations through to the Hypoxic Trimix 100 course, which trains for dives to 100 metres, plus closed-circuit rebreather training and try-dives.

The dive team is genuinely international, drawing instructors and guides from Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Poland, Britain, Switzerland, Malta, Lebanon, Spain and France, so most languages a visiting European diver might need are covered somewhere on the roster.

Two things come up more than anything else in reviews of Dive Systems Malta: how long people keep coming back, and how seriously the technical side is run. One reviewer reports having dived with the centre for five years running. Staff, Sebastian, Stephen and Jenn among them, are named individually and repeatedly, in a family-run, personal atmosphere reviewers credit for that loyalty. The technical side draws its own praise: guided wreck dives on the P29 and Rozi come up often, and a supervised rebreather try-dive gets singled out for its depth: classroom theory, equipment calibration, safety tests and a one-to-one dive, all in a single day.