Watercolours Dive Centre

Jason Fabri started as a PADI instructor in Australia in 1997, came home to Malta, and by 1999 was running Watercolours Diving Expeditions, a liveaboard operating around the Maltese islands. In 2007 he and marine biologist Patrick Vella opened the shore-based Watercolours Dive Centre at the Sliema Aquatic Sports Club, on the seafront opposite the Preluna hotel. Reviews describe a small, name-known team: Jason himself, Jorge De La Morena, Jose Garrido, Michelle Kruell and Michaela, working with divers directly rather than rotating through a large pool.

The house reef sits a few minutes from the front door, the Fortizza tunnels and caverns, used for training dives and repeat shore trips. Boat diving covers Malta's wreck cluster at Cirkewwa and the southern coast, run from the custom trimaran Lily, built in 2020 and certified for 12 divers. The centre holds SSI Extended Range status and runs IANTD technical training up to Tec Instructor level, and is Malta's local TECLINE distributor and service centre. Each year it also partners with the AquaBioTech Group on a marine-biology short course, mixing lectures with a dive and snorkel day at the Sliema base.

Watercolours holds 4.9/5 across 399 TripAdvisor reviews and 4.8/5 across 331 on Google, a consistent score across both platforms. Almost every review names a specific instructor by name rather than praising the business in the abstract, and the owner replies to each one personally. Recurring themes are patience with nervous or first-time divers, flexibility with late and last-minute bookings, and specific dive memories: the X127 wreck at 18 metres, the Um El Faroud, and a first look at posidonia meadows and tunnel systems on the Fortizza house reef. One visitor fit an entire certification into a short holiday window and still came away calling the instruction unhurried.