For fourteen years, the Ocean Geographic Pictures of the Year (OGPICOTY) competition has been a high bar in ocean imaging — judged by names like Dr Sylvia Earle, David Doubilet and Brian Skerry, and decided each year on World Ocean Day. So when the 2026 results landed, one pattern in the Smart Phone category stood out: among more than 300 entries, the photographs that took gold, silver and three of the Honourable Mentions were all shot inside DIVEVOLK underwater phone housings.
This wasn't a niche side bracket. OGPICOTY 2026 drew over 10,000 submissions from 35 countries, and the smartphone division has become one of its most competitive. A near-sweep here is less a story about one lucky frame and more a signal about where underwater photography is heading.
Winner: "Symbiosis" by Zhengjie Wu
DIVEVOLK brand ambassador Zhengjie Wu won the category with Symbiosis, a blackwater image made off Anilao in the Philippines, capturing a juvenile fish sheltering inside the bell of a jellyfish. He shot it on a vivo X200 Pro inside a DIVEVOLK SeaTouch 4 Max Platinum housing.
"The hardest part of underwater smartphone photography is finding, tracking, focusing and composing in near-total darkness, all at once," Wu said. "DIVEVOLK's full touchscreen control let me use every native shooting function of the phone underwater. When a subject only appears for a few seconds, that decides whether you get the shot."
Runner-Up: "Alien Garden" by Tianhong Wang
Tianhong Wang took second place with Alien Garden, a tiny reef fish emerging from a surreal field of spiralling tube worms. He shot it on a HUAWEI Mate80 Pro Max in a DIVEVOLK SeaTouch 4 Max Platinum V2 housing.
"With top-tier gear, mobile images can deliver competition-grade and publication-grade quality, detail and artistry," Wang said. He credits DIVEVOLK's external Bluetooth shutter for killing the camera shake that touchscreen shooting can introduce in high-magnification macro — the difference between a sharp eye and a soft miss.
Honourable Mention: "Floral Murmurs" by Jack Ho
Jack Ho earned an Honourable Mention with Floral Murmurs, a pair of 1.4-centimetre pygmy seahorses framed against a giant sea fan at 20 metres in Lembeh, Manado, Indonesia. He waited more than twenty minutes for the current to settle and the two seahorses to turn toward each other, shooting on a vivo X100 Ultra. His blackwater work earned a separate Special Mention in the same category — and subjects this small reward a stable, responsive system and a good macro lens.
Honourable Mention: "The Neon Nomad" by PJ Aristorenas
PJ Aristorenas earned an Honourable Mention with The Neon Nomad, an acetes shrimp clinging to underwater growth, shot on a Samsung S24 Ultra in a DIVEVOLK SeaTouch 4 Max Platinum housing. "This photo was extremely challenging, as the shrimp kept darting around nonstop," he said. "With great patience, I managed to capture the perfect shot in the end." The same body of work was also named the smartphone-category winner at ADEX 2026.
Honourable Mention: "Compass Jellyfish off the Cornwall Coast" by Martin Stevens
UK marine biologist Martin Stevens earned an Honourable Mention with Compass jellyfish off the Cornwall coast, a wide shot taken while freediving on an iPhone 14 Pro Max in a DIVEVOLK SeaTouch 4 Max Plus. "The DIVEVOLK housing itself is the key game changer for me," Stevens said. "The touchscreen works really well and enables full versatility of the phone — changing camera settings, using third-party apps, and switching between video and photo modes very easily."
Why the Phone Keeps Winning Underwater
Read the winners' interviews back to back and the same technical points surface. Macro and blackwater subjects are tiny, fast and unpredictable; the focal plane is millimetres deep; and the moment is gone in seconds. The two things that decide the shot are precise focus control and zero-shake triggering.
That is exactly the gap a full-touchscreen housing closes. Instead of a few mechanical buttons, divers keep the phone's native camera interface — focus-point selection, exposure, zoom, pro mode and third-party apps — fully usable at depth. Pair that with a steady light from the dive light range and an external shutter, and a flagship phone's computational photography stops being a compromise and starts being an advantage.
It also lowers the barrier. A modular SeaTouch 4 Max kit is a fraction of the size, weight and cost of a traditional housing rig, which is a large part of why a 300-plus-entry smartphone field exists at all — and why it keeps producing competition-grade frames.
DIVEVOLK's Role at OGPICOTY 2026
Beyond the smartphone results, DIVEVOLK supported OGPICOTY 2026 as a prize sponsor: the winner of the Black & White — Ernie Brooks Award of Excellence, Italian photographer Marco Domenicucci, receives a DIVEVOLK housing package valued at US$1,000. A DIVEVOLK user also earned a nomination in the Photojournalist category using a SeaTouch 4 Max Plus.
In her keynote, jury chair Dr Sylvia Earle — founder of Mission Blue — framed the whole competition as a call to action: "These pictures show us what's at stake — they inspire us to protect it. Together, may we move from wonder... to will... to action." Increasingly, the people answering that call are shooting with a phone in their hands.
You can see the full field in the OGPICOTY 2026 winners gallery. And if this echoes a familiar headline, it should: earlier this year, a DIVEVOLK-equipped photographer also took gold in the inaugural smartphone category at Underwater Photographer of the Year 2026.
