What’s the best way to celebrate Halloween with your SCUBA diving buddies?  Underwater Pumpkin Carving Competition, of course!

My first Underwater Pumpkin Carving Competition was with Gator Scuba Club in 2010.  At first, I was unsure about it. How can I possibly carve a pumpkin underwater?  Isn’t carving on land difficult enough?  I’m terrible with knives.  Am I more likely to cut my fingers off??

When we arrived at Blue Grotto in Williston, Florida, we gathered around the picnic tables.  We paired up with a dive buddy, and each group was issued a pumpkin.  We were ready to begin.  But first we needed to prepare the pumpkin for carving (above ground).

Each team cut a hole in the top of their pumpkin and scooped out the seeds and guts.  When it was all cleaned out, we then drew our design on the pumpkin with markers. My buddy and I decided to free-hand draw my design, just like my dad did when I was a kid.

Others teams brought stencils and traced them onto their pumpkins.

After we finished marking up our pumpkins, we put on our SCUBA gear, grabbed our tools, and got in the water.

There are several key elements that made our underwater pumpkin carving possible. We needed to have space to carve without damaging any underwater vegetation.  Blue Grotto has a concrete platform at 15 feet, which made it the perfect place for underwater pumpkin carving.

The pumpkins are buoyant.  In order to keep them grounded on the platform, each team put a weight inside their pumpkin.  As pieces of pumpkin are carved off, they float to the surface.  In order to keep Blue Grotto clean for the next divers, we grabbed a mesh bag and put a weight inside.  As we carved pieces of pumpkin off, we were careful to grab them and place them inside the mesh bag.

We descended to the platform with our pumpkins, mesh bags, and carving tools and started carving.  I found it difficult to cut small, narrow pieces.

Divers who were more skilled knife users than I am didn’t have a problem.

Here’s how the pumpkins turned out:

I had such a great time that I did it again after graduation.  I found a local dive club in Atlanta, and we went to Dive Land Park in Alabama.  Learning from my first attempt, I decided to carve a simpler design into my pumpkin – a shark with less detail, without the tiny fish.

Do you have any unique Halloween traditions?