Divers Broadcast Coral Spawning Live from Beneath the Waves

A team of volunteer divers and conservationists in China has brought one of the ocean’s most spectacular natural events directly to the public, livestreaming coral spawning from beneath the surface – complete with live commentary from the divers themselves.

On the night of 12 May, conservation organisation DiveForLove took to the waters of Da’ao Bay in Shenzhen for its annual ‘Life to Life’ coral spawning broadcast.

Coral spawning is notoriously difficult to capture. The event takes place at night, can last just a few minutes and its timing varies from year to year, requiring divers to repeatedly monitor the reef while waiting for the corals to release their eggs and sperm into the water.

This year, the team used a smartphone in an underwater housing connected to a surface buoy via DIVEVOLK’s SeaLink underwater data system to transmit live images from the reef.

For the first time, divers wearing full-face masks were also able to provide live underwater commentary. Their voices were transmitted via Bluetooth to the smartphone and sent to the surface alongside the video feed, allowing viewers to hear what the divers were seeing as the spawning unfolded.

The communication worked both ways, enabling questions from the surface to be relayed to the divers and answered while they were still underwater.

DiveForLove has been monitoring coral spawning in Shenzhen’s Dapeng waters for several years as part of its work to protect and restore the region’s reefs.

More than 60 species of stony coral have been recorded in the waters around Shenzhen, which lie at the northern edge of the Indo-Pacific coral distribution zone.

By taking viewers beneath the surface as the event happens, the team hopes to make coral conservation more accessible and give people who may never have the opportunity to dive a glimpse of one of the reef’s most remarkable spectacles.

Source: https://www.divevolkdiving.com/en-gb/blogs/news/qianai-dapeng-coral-spawning-livestream-2026