IDC & Tec Diving Malta

PADI Instructor Development Course and IDC Staff Instructor Course at Starfish Diving Malta going extremely well. Great job, team, keep it up.

Congratulations to Nico De Goffau who completed his PADI TEC TRIMIX INSTRUCTOR COURSE today. Now add some serious depth to your teaching style 😁. Great that my fellow PADI CD Thorsten Hielscher Tekkie-San joined for the dives on the Polynesia and Stubborn wreck. Iki iki happy days.

Thanks to my IDC, IDC Staff, Tec Deep and Tec Trimix Instructor candidates in Malta, Cyprus and Austria who trusted me with their training.

Congratulations to Merle Hollensteiner who completed her PADI TEC 40 Course with flying colours. Welcome to the exciting world of Tec Diving. Big thanks to PADI Instructor Tim Dobusch who assisted on the last to training dives.

Congratulations to my fellow PADI CD Nicoli Unt who completed his Tec 45 and Tec 50 Trimix Diver Courses and PADI MI Hakan Bengtsson who completed his Tec 40, Tec 45, Tec 50 Trimix and Sidemount Courses. Now enjoy some beautiful Tec Dives in Malta. Instructor level courses will happen later this year. We had a blast 👌💪🤘🙏😁 #

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a lot of thoughtful discussion around the term “technical diving” - what it means, where it came from, and whether it still actually tells us anything useful.

I want to be clear upfront: I’m not the most experienced technical diver out there, and Traveler Submerged isn’t a technical diving brand. I’m still very much a student in that space. But I do spend a lot of time listening, training, and diving alongside people who’ve been doing this far longer than I have.

What’s struck me is how slippery the word technical has become.

Depending on who you ask, it can mean planned decompression, mixed gas, overhead environments, certain equipment configurations, or simply a level of commitment where you can’t just swim to the surface. And yet none of those lines are universally agreed on. The same dive can be described very differently depending on which agency someone trained with, or even which decade they started diving in.

Historically, many of the things we now label as “technical” were simply… diving. Twinsets, staged decompression, deep wrecks, long runtimes, complex logistics - all of that existed long before the term became common language. The label came later, and it seems to have grown broader ever since.

Today, technical often feels less like a precise description of a dive and more like a convenient umbrella. Sometimes it’s useful shorthand. Other times it feels like a marketing category that bundles together training pathways, equipment choices, and perceived risk, even when the actual demands of the dive don’t change.

What I find interesting is that the most experienced divers I’ve spent time with rarely lean on the label at all. They talk about planning, control, redundancy, margins, and decision-making. About commitment rather than depth. About consequence rather than configuration.

So I’m genuinely curious:
Does the term technical diving still help us understand what’s happening underwater?
Or has it become so broad that it says more about context and branding than about the dive itself?

Not trying to redefine anything here - just sharing an observation and enjoying the conversation.

I’ll also say this: a lot of my thinking around this has been shaped by training and conversations with people who teach and dive far beyond my current level. Huge credit to Chris Heitkemper (Platinum PADI CD and Tec IT) of IDC & Tec Diving Malta working with Starfish Diving Malta for the quality of his technical instruction and for opening my mind not just to deeper dives, but to entirely new pathways in how I think about planning, control, and commitment underwater.

Not a call to “go tech” - just a reminder that good training has a way of expanding how you see the whole picture.

Congratulations to Nico De Goffau who completed the PADI TEC 50 TRIMIX INSTRUCTOR COURSE and the PADI TRIMIX GAS BLENDER INSTRUCTOR COURSE with flying colours. PADI TRIMIX INSTRUCTOR COURSE next starting 1st April 2026. Thanks to Mark Poschung for coming back and joining some awesome Tec Dives at the end of the year.

Congratulations to Robin Bull who today completed his PADI Tec 50 TMX Course today with flying colours. IDC STAFF Course next in 2026! Thanks to Nico de Goffau for assisting, you are well on the way to becoming a PADI Tec 50 TMX Instructor! More news to follow! 👏🥳👌💪

Another great PADI Instructor Development programme comes to an end. Congratulations to the candidates who successfully completed their PADI IDC and PADI IDC STAFF Courses at Starfish Diving Centre in Malta. A big thanks to my dedicated IDC Staff team and the entire Starfish team who contributed immensely to make this course a great success.

Let's train new PADI INSTRUCTORS and IDC STAFF INSTRUCTORS. What a brilliant team!

Congratulations to Adrian M Smith who completed the PADI TEC 40, 45 and 50 Courses exploring some of Malta's best deep wrecks andr reefs. Awesome job, buddy. Next Tec 40,45 and 50 Courses and PADI TEC Instructor Courses starting at December 9th 2025 at Starfish. Extend your depthsand teaching styles 😉🤘 .com

Congratulations to my friend and fellow PADI PRO Arndt Kemper who completed his PADI TEC 50 TRIMIX INSTRUCTOR Course today. Well done buddy. Now add some depth to your teaching style💪😁👌