At this hallowed time of lost souls, a voice whispers across the waves at West Vancouver’s Whytecliff Marine Park, enticing black-suited devotees to enter the dark realm. There’s only one caveat: bring a pumpkin.

When reached at his office at UBC’s Student Union Building, Brendan Andresen, instructor at the university’s Aqua Society, trumpeted the rewards of joining the club’s annual Halloween underwater pumpkin-carving dive at Whytecliff, designated in 1993 as Canada’s first saltwater Marine Protected Area. Ocean temperatures in the waters of Howe Sound remain a constant six degrees year-round, and after sunset the submarine atmosphere changes moods as if someone flipped a switch. Boat traffic dwindles, the ocean calms, the popular dive site becomes ghostly, and, with luck, light from the moon and stars shimmers both on and beneath the inky surface.

Andresen, 22, admitted that, for the uninitiated, night dives can be a little nerve-racking. There’s a fear factor to contend with. Rookie divers conquer that response by practising during the day. On the bright side, high-powered lights that divers carry at night make for easier communication between the dive master and the group. Exhilaration soon conquers queasiness. An abundance of creatures, such as shrimp and jellyfish, rise from the depths to feed near the surface.

Another aid to overcoming fear is that during winter months, underwater visibility in the Strait of Georgia is much improved. Bioluminescence—light that resembles stardust from a pixie’s wand, produced by organisms such as plankton and jellyfish—lights up the blackness.

According to Andresen, the effect was so brilliant earlier this month that he didn’t need a flashlight. One of his favourite ways to trigger the glow is to shake the branches of orange sea pens, which he described as looking like giant feathers growing on the ocean floor. In the reflected glory, a furry crab was seen dining on a brittle star. This weekend, such radiance could just as easily illuminate a fellow diver etching a face on an orange pumpkin.

Even if you don’t arrive at Whytecliff with dive gear, you can still share vicariously in the sport from a driftwood perch. During the day, surf-sized swells kicked up by a constant stream of boats and ships, including B.C. Ferries vessels, thump the shoreline, from the park’s pebble-and-sand beach to the rocky outcroppings of White Cliff Point overlooking Queen Charlotte Channel, which separates the mainland from Bowen Island. Nearby, Whyte Islet lies temptingly close. A rocky breakwater, all but submerged at high tide, links the beach with the dumpling-shaped islet. Worse things can happen than to be marooned for several hours offshore while waiting for the waters to recede. Just as elsewhere in the park, Whyte Islet sports plenty of sheltered lookouts, such as copses of shore pine, to snuggle in while watching the ever-changing scene in Vancouver’s outer harbour.

On a recent visit, one noticeable change at Whytecliff was the absence of signs in the parking lot that had long admonished divers to use the spacious washrooms when doffing their wet or dry suits and to keep their language clean. In reference to manners, whatever similarity there once might have been between aberrant divers and biker gangs has long since vanished.

These days, according to Ab Kurk, manager of Rowand’s Reef Scuba Shop on Granville Island, would-be divers who sign up for lessons are just as likely to be families preparing for a Caribbean vacation as the more typical 25- to 35-year-olds. A former backcountry hiker, Kurk once thought he’d seen all British Columbia had to offer. Given a choice eight years ago to try out flying or diving, he chose the less-expensive option: whereas flight instruction typically runs a minimum of $8,000, scuba-diving certification costs less than $500.

If you don’t try diving, you only see half of what’s on offer in Lotusland—particularly at night, when the ocean comes alive and you can see marine creatures with defence mechanisms play dead when caught in a light beam. That’s when divers can examine shy octopuses and rockfish. The good news is that there’s nothing dangerous or even aggressive in local waters: sea lions are big and frisky, but that’s as risky as the depths get. Except at Halloween, of course, when the pumpkin-carving knives come out. Even then, the only shivers you’ll get diving are most likely from exhaustion.

Access: Whytecliff Marine Park lies 20 kilometres west of Vancouver near Horseshoe Bay at the western end of Marine Drive. If you’re in no hurry, enjoy the scenic route by taking Marine Drive all the way to the park from the Lions Gate Bridge rather than taking the Upper Levels Highway. For detailed information, visit westvancouver.ca/parks. Dogs are allowed in the park, though off-leash is only on the trails on the east side of Marine Drive. For information on the UBC Aqua Society, whose membership is open to the general public, call 604-822-3329. For Rowand’s Reef Scuba Shop, call 604-669-3483.

Good primers to consult on local marine life include The Beachcomber’s Guide to Seashore Life in the Pacific Northwest (Harbour Publishing) and Life in the Pacific Ocean (Greystone Books).