In November 2024, Beijing's HaySea Diving Center hosted a voice-enabled underwater mahjong event, and DIVEVOLK SeaLink was used to livestream the activity from the pool. The idea was simple enough to explain in one sentence and strange enough to make people stop scrolling: take a social game built around conversation, move it underwater, and let the audience hear and watch it in real time instead of waiting for edited clips afterward.
For a dive center, that is more than a novelty. Pool-based venues are no longer just places where students complete confined-water skills before a trip. The best urban dive centers are becoming community spaces, training rooms, production studios, and event venues at the same time. HaySea's underwater mahjong night showed how a pool can become a live stage when the underwater-to-surface communication link is reliable enough.
The Challenge: A Social Game Underwater
Mahjong depends on timing, table presence, and voice. Players call tiles, respond to one another, and keep the rhythm of the game moving through conversation. Remove the audio and a mahjong match becomes hard for an audience to follow, especially when the players are underwater and every movement is slowed by buoyancy, gear, and limited breath or gas management.
That is the same problem many underwater events face. A wedding, interview, skills demo, product launch, or themed pool party may look good on camera, but the audience usually receives it as a silent highlight reel. Without live sound and a dependable video path, the event stays trapped behind the glass.
HaySea's event tested the opposite premise: if the audience can hear the underwater activity while it is happening, the pool becomes a place for live programming rather than just a place for practice.
The Venue: Why HaySea Was Built for This
HaySea is a multi-level dive center in Beijing with roughly 1,000 square meters of space. The first level combines a bar, lounge, viewing area, coffee, drinks, snacks, books, and vinyl records. It also includes a large LED activity screen and a 3.2 by 1.8 meter wide viewing window, so people on deck or in the lounge can follow pool activity without being in the water.
The second level includes two teaching areas and additional viewing and rest space. The third level is the diving area, with showers, changing rooms, and a sunlit terrace. The center supports freediving, mermaid training, scuba diving, underwater portrait sessions, theme parties, and global trip programming. In other words, HaySea already had the physical ingredients for an audience-facing event: water, viewing lines, hospitality, and a reason for non-divers to stay engaged.
The missing piece for an underwater mahjong night was the live link. A large screen helps only if it receives a useful feed. A viewing window helps only for people standing in the right place. SeaLink's role was to carry the underwater activity out of the pool and into the room in real time.
The Action: Voice, Video, and SeaLink
A voice-enabled underwater event generally needs three layers to work. First, participants need a safe voice-capable diving setup. For many underwater communication formats, that means full-face-mask training or a comparable system that gives the diver an air space for speech; PADI's overview of full-face mask diving explains why this equipment is different from a standard regulator and why training matters.
Second, the camera side needs a stable underwater view. A phone inside a DIVEVOLK underwater phone housing or a comparable protected camera setup can frame the table, players, and surrounding pool space without requiring a large broadcast rig. For small venues, that is what keeps live underwater content practical instead of turning it into a television-truck project.
Third, the underwater signal has to reach the surface. That is where the SeaLink underwater livestream transmitter fits. SeaLink is designed for real-time underwater video and audio transmission, giving teams a way to send the feed toward a surface device and then onward to the venue screen or online platform. For operators comparing hardware options, the SeaLink transmitter collection is the product family built around that job.
At HaySea, the result was an event the audience could follow as a live experience. Instead of seeing only bodies and tiles through the water, viewers could connect the underwater action with the sound and rhythm of the game. That is what turns a clever photo opportunity into programming people can stay with from start to finish.
The Result: A Repeatable Event Format
The important lesson is not that every dive center should add mahjong to its training calendar. The lesson is that underwater voice events can be designed as complete audience experiences. When the venue has a screen, a viewing zone, trained participants, and a dependable livestream path, the pool can host formats that previously made sense only on dry land.
That matters for dive centers because community programming drives retention. A student who visits only for a certification may disappear after the course. A student who comes back for theme nights, demo sessions, creator shoots, and club events starts to see the venue as part of their weekly life. DAN's broader diver safety resources are a useful reminder that any event still has to be built around training, supervision, gas planning, and conservative procedures rather than novelty alone.
For content teams, the format also opens a practical production path. Most underwater video depends on music and voiceover added later because usable live dialogue is difficult. A voice-capable event changes the workflow: the audience can hear what is happening in the water while the camera captures it. Pairing SeaLink with the verified SeaTouch 4 Max underwater phone housing gives a small crew a compact way to shoot, transmit, and review underwater content in the same session.
What Other Dive Centers Can Borrow
For operators planning a similar event, the checklist is less about copying mahjong and more about designing a format the audience can actually understand.
- Start with a game or activity that needs sound. Interviews, Q&A sessions, training narration, and tabletop-style games all benefit more from live voice than a simple swim-by demo.
- Use trained participants and a controlled pool plan. Voice and livestream hardware should never distract from buoyancy, breathing, buddy procedures, or surface supervision.
- Give the audience a clear viewing point. A pool window is excellent, but a large LED screen is often enough if the camera framing is clean.
- Test the signal in the actual venue. Screens, lights, walls, pool depth, and crowd movement all affect production quality. Rehearse before the audience arrives.
- Assign a surface producer. One person should be responsible for monitoring the feed, audio level, timing, and audience display while the dive team focuses on the water.
Long-form dive media has already shown that audiences are willing to spend time with real diver stories when the format is clear. Underwater livestreaming adds a new layer to that storytelling: it lets the story unfold while the diver is still below the surface.
Why This Event Matters for SeaLink
HaySea's November 2024 event is useful because it is not a typical reef demo. It took place in an urban dive center, around a social activity, with an audience that needed both picture and sound to understand what was happening. That is the kind of environment where a livestream device has to prove more than image quality. It has to support a format.
For DIVEVOLK, the takeaway is concrete. SeaLink is not only for dramatic open-water broadcasts. It can support training rooms, pool events, creator sessions, and community programming where the value comes from immediacy. When a venue can connect underwater participants with an audience in the same room, the pool becomes part of the event space rather than a separate activity area.
If your team is planning a voice-enabled underwater event, start with the venue plan and safety team, then build the livestream workflow around them. The technical support and downloads page is the right place to check setup resources before testing, and DIVEVOLK's contact us page is the next step for teams that need help matching SeaLink hardware to a pool, class, or production format.
