‘The coolest thing ever’: B.C. couple’s underwater proposal includes treasure chest and sea turtle

"My eyes were welling up." Adam finds out how a couple’s unexpected connection led to a unforgettable proposal under the sea.

ROYSTON, B.C. — As Cailin Lindsay walks along the beach in B.C., she recalls posing for a photo with her family in Mexico.

They had asked a random person to take the picture when somebody else approached the group.

“Maxwell comes and takes the phone out of their hand and takes a picture of our family,” Cailin recalls with a laugh. “That was our initial meet and greet.”

The person who took the photo was Maxwel Hohn. He was also on vacation and recognized Cailin’s dad John because they had worked together when he was a commercial diver.

“And I was like, ‘Oh! John has a daughter!’” Maxwel recalls with a smile. “So, I had a really good in, because I was (already) accepted by the father in the family.”

Although Cailin and Maxwel grew up in the same place, they’d never met before this.

“We really hit it off,” Cailin says. “It just kinda flowed.”

They discovered they had similar upbringings, shared common values, and enjoyed the same interests. So, they decided to go diving there together, which turned out to be their first date.

“I pretty much figured she was ‘the one’ after the second day I knew her,” Maxwel says.

But it wasn’t until three years later, after Cailin and Maxwel started working together on his wildlife cinematography business — with clients that included National Geographic, Netflix, and Disney — that they really realized how good a team they really were.

“True love exists,” Cailin says. “Wait for the right person, you’ll know it.”

That’s when Maxwel decided to spend six months planning a surprise for Cailin, during a diving trip to the Galapagos Islands.

“All the things that could go wrong were going wrong,” Maxwel says.

The current was so strong that day, the thing that Maxwel had hidden earlier on the bottom of the ocean seemed to have swept away. But then, Cailin spotted a giant sea turtle.

“I was watching the turtle,” Cailin says. “Then my gaze shifts and I notice this treasure chest.”

“It was like the turtle was guarding the chest,” Maxwel says. “It was the coolest thing ever.”

“And I’m like, ‘Whoa! What is that doing here !?’” Cailin says. “‘That can’t be for us.’”

But when Cailin opened it, she found it filled with photos documenting her and Maxwel’s love story, beginning with that first date.

“I started crying,” Cailin says. “My eyes were welling up and my mask was filling with tears.”

Because she knew then, without having to read the love letter Maxwel had also placed in a bottle, or wear the engagement ring that was also resting in the chest, that the answer to his proposal was absolutely “yes.”

“I was just over the moon,” Cailin smiles. “I just couldn’t believe he had put so much thought and energy into a proposal.”

While they celebrated their proposal on a boat, and expect their wedding to be staged on dry land, the couple is committed to spending as much as they can as husband and wife under the sea.