Over 90 divers and Santa himself, equipped with boubles, lightsticks and other christmas decorations took the plung on boxing day in Malta to create Malta’s first underwater Christmas tree. The event was organised by the Calypso Sub Aqua Club - BSAC Branch 393 and Dive Systems and managed to raise 1200 euros for the national charity drive “l-Istrina” which in turn managed to collect a total of over 2.3 m Euros for the Community Chest Fund.

The CSAC and Dive Systems called on local divers and tourists visiting the island to join in this fundraising event which was also a great opportunity for the diving community to come together, meet up over the christmas holidays and, whilst doing something unusual, help out the national charity drive to collect as much money as possible for those in need. For the event, which was held just in front of Dive Systems’ Sliema centre, the organisers built an 18-foot-long tree which was then placed underwater. “All participating divers were given decorations and underwater lights to set up on this structure. At first we were not quite sure it would work but we had such a good turnout that the tree filled up nicely and in the end we had a great-looking underwater Christmas tree complete with decorations and lights.” said Mario Azzopardi of the Calypso Sub Aqua Club who was extremely pleased with the turnout and the support that the diving community has shown. “This encourages us to keep on organising activities for charity and we hope that next year we will do something bigger and better”.

The event was filmed underwater by professional underwater videographer Emi Farrugia who produces Malta’s top underwater Programmes for local Television Stations.

Dive Systems managing director Smon Sciberras siad that it was nice to have the whole diving community meet up and do something for charity. “We are a company which has always had a strong sense of corporate social responsibility and have organised many events for charity and also for the environment. This year a friend of ours, Raniero Borg, proposed this idea to us and once we had the CSAC on board we started getting organised.” Mr. Sciberras said he was extremely pleased with the support and turn out, “We were hoping for a good turn out and were praying that the weather would hold and in fact although the weather was not perfect the turnout exceeded expectations with more than 90 divers joining in. Whilst certain things might look very simple on land, underwater everything is more complicated however we managed to construct a nice-looking christmas tree and the decorations were fantastic.”