Scouts: Pineapple, Red Snapper, Sundial, The Seahorse
Dive Pros: Sgt. Major, The Splendid Toadfish, and Queen Triggerfish
Date: October 16, 2021
Average Dive Time: 60 minutes
Location: Windy point
Dive: Underwater pumpkin carving
Last weekend I got my underwater pumpkin carving certification because apparently there is a certification for everything. I was joined by Pineapple, Red Snapper, and the Seahorse. We all had pumpkins about the same size and it was beautiful outside. Out the first objective was to correctly weigh the pumpkins which meant going down to the water and testing how much weight we needed to make them neutrally buoyant which is harder than you think because you have to hold the pumpkin really close to the weights but the weights want to sink and the pumpkin wants to float. Along with that, the water was cold. None of us had put on our wetsuits and getting half of our body wet in the cold water was not nice, even if the air was perfect. We lugged the pumpkins up the steep stairs and back to our set up where we geared up and got ready for the dive.
With the weight of our gear and the pumpkins and weight in our mesh bags walking to the stairs to get down to level one was not easy and meant paying attention to our feet so as to not trip over rocks on the ground. At first, the water was cold but I quickly adjusted and started to focus on my pumpkin. Now, we had to cover 5 skills to get the certification; weighting the pumpkin, swimming with the pumpkin, hovering with the pumpkin, carving the pumpkin, and doing a 3-minute safety stop with the pumpkin. We all descended and neutralized our buoyancy so we could start swimming.
Swimming was easier than you would expect in my opinion. The hardest part was keeping hold of the bag right above the pumpkin but overall everyone made it to platform 2. This is where we began to carve and carving took the majority of the time. The hardest part of actually carving the pumpkin was making those first cuts because all the air inside the pumpkin was making it very floaty. I tried just sticking the carving tool in the pumpkin but it didn't work and I had to make a huge hole in the pumpkin for the air to really start coming out. Afterward, we put one of the weights inside the pumpkin to keep it down. I carve pumpkins regularly every year on land so this was not a huge issue for me, even underwater it was really not that hard compared to on land. I carved out the face and letters on my pumpkin till it had a jack o'lantern face and right next to the face the words *Pumpkin dive* on it. This part took the longest and you had to keep checking your air because even though you weren't swimming you were constantly using up energy.
Finally, I scooped out the pumpkin innards. The small wisps of pumpkin were everywhere floating around us but I did try to capture the biggest blobs of pumpkin whenever I could. After scooping out the innards, we took our underwater picture with the pumpkin which was when we covered the skill hovering with the pumpkin. This was easy even with the extra weight inside it. We took the pictures and gathered together getting ready to go back up to the surface. This was when I noticed that my pumpkin carving tools were wrapped around my octopus. I tried a little to untangle it but there was no coming back and we were about to ascend and do the safety stop so I gave up and started to swim up.
The 3-minute safety stop was the worst thing that we had to do. The 8 pounds I had used to neutralize my pumpkin at first weighed me down and I had to kick really hard and inflate my BCD to keep myself in one place. This was also where the cold started to creep in and by 1 minute I was done with this safety stop. Later, Red Snapper and the Seahorse both stated that they were cold while carving too. When we finally came up we were all freezing in our wetsuits. After getting out of the water and stumbling to our set up we were all freezing and ready to get warm or have a hot shower.
Despite the troubles of carving the pumpkin underwater, it was a very rewarding experience that I want to do every year. We all had wonderful pumpkins and it was so much fun. We spent an hour underwater carving out pumpkins and even though it was freezing and even though I had forgotten my towel and was still freezing after the dive it was extremely fun and I got the certification for it. This might be a totally useless certification but it is one that is just fun to do and if you ever get a chance to carve a pumpkin underwater I would 100% recommend taking that opportunity. It won't disappoint.
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