The SeaLink underwater communication system float above the dive team, where picture and voice come up together. Image courtesy of DiveForLove / DIVEVOLK.
ZHUHAI, China – September 1, 2026 – DIVEVOLK today announced that its SeaLink Underwater Smartphone Data Transmitter carried the live signal for DiveForLove’s 2026 “Life to Life” (Make it Live) coral spawning broadcast, streaming the annual spawning event in Da’ao Bay, Shenzhen, on the night of May 12, 2026. DiveForLove is the Shenzhen Dapeng New District Coral Conservation Volunteer Federation, a local coral conservation organization founded in 2013.
What separates this year’s broadcast from the 2025 attempt is sound. Divers worked in full face masks, their voices carried over Bluetooth into the phone inside its housing and up through SeaLink alongside the live image. During the minutes when the colonies released their gametes, the commentary came from the diver on site, so no presenter on shore had to narrate the returning feed second-hand. The whole rig went aboard one boat, carried by the volunteer dive team itself, with no broadcast truck, cabling or camera crew involved.
A volunteer seats the phone in its DIVEVOLK housing and pairs the underwater voice module with it before the night dive. Image courtesy of DiveForLove / DIVEVOLK.
Coral Spawning Is a Once-a-Year Event That Lasts Minutes
Coral spawning is the sexual reproduction of reef-building corals, and it is how a coral population maintains its genetic diversity and its capacity to adapt. Colonies release eggs and sperm into the water column, often within a synchronised window tied to the lunar cycle and to water temperature. Fertilised eggs develop into free-swimming planula larvae that drift on currents until they settle and found a new colony.
Three properties make the event difficult to reach. It happens at night. It lasts a short time, sometimes only minutes. And its exact date shifts from year to year, which is why documenting it takes repeated dives across weeks rather than a single scheduled shoot.
The stakes behind those dives are ecological. Reefs cover roughly 0.1 percent of the ocean floor yet provide habitat for about a quarter of all marine species. Shenzhen sits on the northern edge of the Indo-Pacific coral distribution zone, and more than 60 stony coral species have been recorded in its waters, all listed as national second-class protected animals in China. When a coral colony spawns in Da’ao Bay, it is direct evidence that local water conditions still support reproduction rather than only survival.
A volunteer used SeaLink to demonstrate the coral spawning process to viewers during a live stream. Image courtesy of DiveForLove / DIVEVOLK.
What Changed Between Last Year and This Year
The 2025 livestream solved the picture. SeaLink carried live underwater video to the surface, and the public could watch coral spawning in Dapeng waters as it happened. Sound was another matter. A standard regulator fills a diver’s mouth, and a sealed housing shuts the phone’s microphone away from the water, so nobody could speak from the site. That year the commentary came from a presenter on shore reading the returning feed, or was dubbed in once the dive was over.
In 2026 the team closed that gap. Divers switched to full face masks. Their voice was picked up inside the mask, passed over Bluetooth into the phone in its housing, and travelled up with the live image. During the minutes when the colonies released, what the diver was looking at, which colonies were going in synchrony, which way the egg bundles were rising, the audience heard it at the moment they saw it.
The link runs both ways. Divers talk to each other to coordinate framing and lighting. Questions from the surface reach the water, and a diver can answer while the release is still under way.
That matters more for a local reef than for a distant one. Dapeng’s corals grow beside one of China’s largest cities, and most Shenzhen residents will never dive the site. Watching volunteers hold position in the dark while hearing why these colonies can still spawn this year is what makes the repeated dives concrete.
Cost decides who gets to run this at all. A volunteer organization has no outside broadcast unit. Once the chain fits into a phone, a housing, a voice module and a surface unit, conservation groups, marine educators and research teams can afford real-time underwater commentary too.
SeaLink Moves the Underwater Signal to the Surface
Water blocks the wireless signals a phone relies on, so a smartphone that streams reliably on land goes dark the moment it is submerged. SeaLink is built for that gap. It links the phone inside the underwater housing to a floating surface unit, supporting underwater signal transmission at depths of up to 30 meters and feeding live video, livestream audio and two-way communication into the same platforms a team already broadcasts on.
A volunteers used a SeaTouchunderwater housingwith a full touchscreen to record the entire process of live-streaming the coral reefs underwater. Images provided by DIVEVOLK.
Night operations add their own demands. The team stages the phone, the housing seal and the pairing on the boat before entering the water, because nothing can be reconfigured once the housing is closed. The DIVEVOLK housings that carry the phone give divers full touchscreen control of the phone’s native camera app underwater, so exposure and framing can be adjusted in the dark by hand, at the moment the corals begin to release.
How the Underwater Communication System Works
Getting a diver to narrate from underwater means solving three things in order: whether they can speak at all, whether that speech can reach the phone, and whether it can get from the phone to the surface.
The full face mask handles the first. A standard regulator occupies the mouth and leaves a diver unable to form clear words. A mask of the Ocean Reef type keeps the whole face in a dry space, so a diver breathes and speaks normally while a voice unit inside the mask picks up the audio. Swap in a two-way voice unit and divers can also talk to each other.
The DIVEVOLK Wireless Microphone Transmitter (WMT) handles the second. An audio cable runs from the mask’s voice port into one end of the module; the other end pairs over Bluetooth with the phone inside the housing. The module weighs about 250 g and seats into a slot on the SeaLink body, so it stays put as the diver moves. Voice and image end up on the same phone, which means no audio to sync afterwards.
SeaLink handles the third. Bluetooth only covers the short hop into the housing. Carrying the phone’s real-time signal up through the water is the job of the SeaLink Underwater Smartphone Data Transmitter.
With the three connected, the diver’s voice and the underwater picture reach the surface broadcast end together. DIVEVOLK sells the combination as the SeaLink Neptune communication and livestream kit, so a team does not have to assemble it from separate systems.
Six Years of Spawning Records in Dapeng Waters
The 2026 broadcast follows a documentation record that DiveForLove has built since 2020.
Quote from DIVEVOLK
“Coral spawning is the hardest kind of story to tell, because the thing worth showing lasts minutes and happens in the dark, underwater, once a year,” said DIVEVOLK Marketing & Communications.
“Last year we got the picture ashore. This year we brought the voice with it. A diver can explain what is happening at the moment the corals release, and answer questions sent down from the surface, so the science does not have to wait until everyone is back on land.”
“DiveForLove’s volunteers have been diving Dapeng since 2013. Our part is the link that lets the public stand next to them while corals in their own city’s waters release new life.”
About the 2026 “Life to Life” Campaign
The 2026 “Life to Life” (Make it Live) campaign is DiveForLove’s public science communication programme built around Dapeng coral spawning. The organization has carried out coral restoration and habitat maintenance in Dapeng Bay and Da’ao Bay since 2013, and operates a coral conservation station in the area. Coral cover in the waters around Shenzhen has been reported by DiveForLove as once reaching 70 percent before declining to roughly 30 percent under pressure from human activity and changing marine conditions.
The campaign sits alongside DiveForLove’s wider 2026 World Ocean Day activities, including an appearance at APEC · Nature Shenzhen, youth ocean conservation project sharing in Xiamen, and a June 8 science communication livestream from the coral conservation station.
About DiveForLove
DiveForLove, formally the Shenzhen Dapeng New District Coral Conservation Volunteer Federation, is a coral conservation organization co-initiated by the Shenzhen Dapeng New District Management Committee and the outdoor community platform Mofang. It brings together environmental workers, marine researchers and divers around coral reef biodiversity monitoring, habitat maintenance, restoration practice and public education. Its core public message, “plant corals, plant hearts,” reflects its position that reef recovery depends on ecological action and on long-term change in how the public behaves toward the sea.
About DIVEVOLK
DIVEVOLK, headquartered in Zhuhai, China, is a global technology company specializing in underwater smartphone housings and diving accessories. The company designs and manufactures the SeaTouch 4 Max series of underwater smartphone housings and related accessories for diving, snorkeling, and underwater imaging.
The revolutionary SeaLink Underwater Smartphone Data Transmitter enables phones to receive signals at depths of up to 30 meters underwater, supporting features such as live streaming and video communication across multiple platforms. DIVEVOLK was honored as ScubaLab’s Best Buy in 2024 and twice won the German dive award for Innovation, in 2024 and 2026.
DIVEVOLK products are sold worldwide through https://divevolkdiving.com/ and authorized retailers. The company is committed to making underwater image creation affordable and accessible to every diver, marine researcher, and ocean communicator, and to advancing the technology that enables it.
DIVEVOLK SeaLink and SeaTouch product system. Product image courtesy of DIVEVOLK.
Editor’s Notes
Media ContactCompany Name: DivevolkContact Person: Marketing & CommunicationsEmail: Send EmailCountry: ChinaWebsite: https://www.divevolkdiving.com
