How to Host an Underwater Pumpkin Carving Contest: Site, Rules, Gear, and a Step-by-Step Plan for Dive Clubs

Every October, dive clubs and shops around the country haul a few dozen pumpkins to the water, drop them to the sand, and let divers loose with knives. Underwater pumpkin carving contests are one of the easiest community events to run: the buy-in is low, everyone gets a laugh, and even divers who have not been in the water since summer will show up for it. If your club has never hosted one, or your last one felt a little disorganized, this guide walks through the whole thing, from picking pumpkins to cleaning up the scraps.

Why Underwater Pumpkin Carving Works as a Club Event

Most club dives compete with a dozen other things people could be doing on a Saturday. A pumpkin carving contest is different because it gives people a reason to come that has nothing to do with conditions or visibility. Newer divers get a low-pressure, shallow dive with a clear task. Experienced divers get to show off. Non-diving partners and kids can come to the beach or the boat to judge. And it lands right before the season slows down in most of the country, which makes it a natural last hurrah and a good time to talk about the winter dive calendar.

It also photographs well. A row of glowing jack-o'-lanterns on the dock at dusk, with a pile of wet dive gear behind them, is the kind of picture that gets shared and brings new members to your next meeting.

Six to Eight Weeks Out: Pick a Site and Set the Rules

Choosing the dive site

The ideal site is shallow, sandy, and easy to enter. Carving happens on the bottom, so you want a flat patch of sand or gravel in 15 to 30 feet of water where divers can settle without kneeling on anything living. Quarries, lakes, and protected shore sites with a sandy bottom are perfect. Avoid reef, grass beds, and anything with current, since a floating pumpkin in current is a quick way to lose it. If you are running the event from a boat, ask the captain to anchor over sand and confirm depth on the mooring before the day.

Check whether your site needs a permit for an organized group. Public parks, quarries, and marinas often have a simple form for club events, and some will want proof of liability insurance from your club or the sponsoring dive shop.

Writing the rules

Decide these before you announce the event, and put them in writing. The rules that matter most:

• Tools: dive knife only, or are pumpkin carving kits allowed? Knife-only produces simpler designs but is easier to police. If you allow small tools, require them to be tethered.
• Prep: can divers pre-gut their pumpkin on shore and pre-draw the design, or does everything happen underwater? Pre-gutting on land is strongly recommended (more on that below).
• Time: one dive of 30 to 40 minutes is plenty. Set a hard bottom time and a gas turn pressure so people are not tempted to finish one last cut.
• Judging: who judges, what categories, and when. Categories like Best Ocean Animal, Scariest, Most Creative, and Best Buddy Team give more people a chance to win something.
• Teams: one pumpkin per buddy pair keeps buddies together and halves the number of pumpkins you have to buy.

Getting the word out

Announce it at your club meeting and in your group chat or email list, then post it on your club's social pages with a sign-up link. Ask people to RSVP by a set date so you know how many pumpkins to buy. A simple sign-up form with name, certification level, buddy preference, and whether they need to rent a tank is enough. Consider inviting a local dive shop to co-host; they will often provide tank fills, a prize or two, and extra staff for surface support.

The Week Before: Pumpkins, Prizes, and Roles

Buying and prepping pumpkins

Buy carving pumpkins, not pie pumpkins. Carving varieties have thinner walls that are much easier to cut through with a dive knife, and they are cheap in October. Pick medium-sized ones, roughly the size of a basketball. Anything larger is awkward to manage underwater and floats hard enough to be a real fight.

Prepping on land the day before, or the morning of, saves a lot of bottom time and keeps most of the guts out of the water. For each pumpkin:

• Cut the lid and scoop it clean. A large spoon or ice cream scoop works well.
• Keep the lids on shore. They float away instantly underwater and nobody carves them anyway.
• Drop a 2- or 3-pound soft weight or a lead block inside. A gutted pumpkin is very buoyant, and without ballast divers end up wrestling it to the bottom instead of carving.
• Number each pumpkin with a permanent marker so judges can score anonymously.

Have a couple of spares. Someone's pumpkin will crack on the dock.

Prizes

Prizes do not need to be expensive to be motivating. A dive light, a pair of gloves, a mesh bag, or a gift card from the sponsoring shop is plenty. Small, useful things like a Scubapro Flashy LED tank marker or a safety whistle work well as category prizes because everyone can use them on their next dive. If you would rather give one bigger prize, a full-size dive knife is on-theme and something most divers will keep for years.

Assigning roles

An event with 15 to 25 divers runs smoothly with four volunteer roles:

• Event lead: gives the briefing, keeps time, and makes the final call on conditions.
• Surface support: stays out of the water, handles pumpkin hand-offs, tracks who is in and who is out, and has a phone and a first aid kit. This person is non-negotiable.
• Judges: two or three people, ideally non-divers or the surface crew, so no competitor judges their own work.
• Cleanup and photos: one person who takes the finished pumpkins, lines them up for a group photo, and makes sure scraps go in the trash and not the water.

Gear Divers Should Bring

Beyond a standard kit, remind everyone to bring the following. Post the list with the event announcement so nobody is scrambling on the day.

A blunt-tip dive knife

This is the one piece of gear that actually determines how the carving goes. A blunt-tip or tanto-style blade is safer around gloves, hoses, and neighbors on the sand, and a serrated section makes it much easier to saw through the pumpkin's wall. If someone in the club only has a tiny line cutter, a modest folding knife will be a big upgrade for the day.

The Tusa X-Pert II blunt tip is a good all-round choice for this: a full-size handle that is easy to grip in gloves, a serrated edge for sawing, and no point to worry about. For divers who want something smaller and less expensive, the DiveCatalog folding dive knife clips to a BC pocket and does the job. You can compare more options in the dive knives collection.

Gloves

Even in warm water, wear gloves. Wet pumpkin is slippery, your knife is sharp, and your hands are the closest thing to the blade. A thin pair like the Scubapro Tropic 1.5mm keeps dexterity for detail cuts in warm water; in October in a northern quarry, go with 5mm from the dive gloves collection and expect the designs to get simpler.

A mesh bag and a marker

Each buddy pair should carry a small mesh bag for scraps and any loose carving tools. A permanent marker is useful for drawing the design on the pumpkin before descending. Thick lines are easier to follow at depth, especially once the skin is wet and orange turns muted.

A light

Not strictly necessary in daylight at 20 feet, but a small dive light lets divers check their work inside the pumpkin, and a light placed inside a finished pumpkin for the group photo is the shot everyone will want.

On the Day: Briefing, Dive Plan, and Judging

The briefing

Run this like any organized dive, then add the pumpkin-specific parts. Cover the site, depth, entry and exit, max bottom time, turn pressure, and the recall signal. Then walk through:

• Knives stay sheathed on entry, descent, ascent, and exit. Only draw them once settled on the bottom.
• Pumpkins are handed to divers after they are in the water and handed back to surface support before anyone climbs a ladder. Nobody climbs a ladder holding a weighted pumpkin.
• Stay with your buddy. The person not carving watches gas, depth, and the surroundings, then you swap.
• Settle on sand only. If you cannot find a clear patch, hover and carve with your buddy holding the pumpkin.
• Check your gauge every few minutes. Carving is absorbing, and task focus is the main risk on this dive.

Managing the pumpkin underwater

Even with a weight inside, a pumpkin wants to roll and drift. The easiest approach is for one buddy to hold it steady in the sand while the other carves, working from the center of the design outward. Start with small detail cuts and finish with the big openings; once the big pieces are out, the pumpkin gets floppier and harder to control. Push cut pieces into the mesh bag rather than letting them float off. Local fish will investigate but usually lose interest quickly.

A few divers add a pound or two of extra weight for this dive so they can stay planted without finning. That is fine as long as they remember to remove it for the next normal dive.

Surfacing and judging

When the recall goes out or a pair hits turn pressure, they stow knives, bag scraps, and ascend with the pumpkin. At the surface, the pumpkin goes to surface support first, then the diver exits. Line the finished pumpkins up by number, put a light or a battery tea candle inside each one, and let the judges work while divers rinse gear. Announce winners while everyone is still there and still cold, then take the group photo with the pumpkins in front.

Keep the Site Clean

Pumpkin is biodegradable, but a few dozen pounds of it left on a small dive site is still a mess, and some sites explicitly ban it. Make cleanup part of the rules:

• Pre-gut on land so most of the waste never enters the water.
• Every pair brings their scraps up in a mesh bag.
• Carved pumpkins go home with their carvers or into the trash, not back in the water.
• Do a quick sweep of the entry area before leaving for lids, markers, and dropped tools.

If your site has rules against introducing organic material, run the same event in a pool instead. It is less atmospheric but works for a club social, and it lets divers who are not yet comfortable in open water take part.

A Simple Timeline

• 6 to 8 weeks out: pick the site, confirm permits or boat, write the rules, line up a shop sponsor, and announce with a sign-up form.
• 2 weeks out: close RSVPs, assign roles, order prizes, and send a gear reminder with the knife and glove list.
• Day before: buy pumpkins, gut them, weight them, and number them. Charge lights and pack the first aid kit.
• Event day: briefing, one 30 to 40 minute dive, judging, photos, and cleanup within about three hours.
• Day after: post the photos, thank the sponsor and volunteers, and announce the next event.

Once your club has run one of these, it tends to become an annual fixture. Keep notes on what worked, how many pumpkins you actually needed, and which categories got the most entries, and next year's event will nearly organize itself. If you need to outfit a few members before the date, the knives, gloves, and safety and signaling collections have everything on the list above.