Diving centre submerges a Christmas tree playing festive tunes 19ft underwater

A diving centre has submerged a Christmas tree playing festive tunes 19ft underwater in its lake - the music can be heard up to 500ft away.

Stoney Cove National Dive Centre, in Leicestershire, has been placing the festive tree underwater for the last three years as an attraction for customers at its diving centre.

The tree is decorated with bright lights, baubles and has festive tunes playing which can be seen and heard by divers visiting the centre.

Martin Woodward, Principle at Stoney Cove, was the man who originally came up with the idea for the attraction.

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Martin, 63, said: “It’s essentially an underwater celebration of Christmas. We’ve been doing it for a few years now, I think it’s three years in total.

“It was my idea initially, we wanted to celebrate Christmas and give the divers something interesting to look at. It’s something that customers really appreciate and enjoy seeing it. It always gets a cheer from customers when we lower it into the water.”

Chris Ryan / SWNS

It’s not only divers who benefit from the tree – open water swimmers who use the 1-acre site for training can both see and hear the tree, reportedly up to 500ft away.

Martin, who has been at the centre for 35 years, said: “We get a lot of open water swimmers as the water is spring-fed water so it’s preferable for them. We don’t have any of the plant life creatures you would usually find.

“The swimmers get the benefit of the tree as they get to see the tree lit up and they can hear the music when they go over it or near it.”

Martin and the team plan to expand the festive spirit of the tree by live streaming the event next year for divers who can’t see it in person.

Martin said: “Next year we want to do a live stream of the tree underwater.

“We want to broadcast it live and give off a live stream so that anyone can access it. That’ll extend it to armchair divers as not many people can get underwater to appreciate it.”

SWNS reporting by Adam Dutton.