It's Saturday in the waters surrounding Hong Kong's Basalt Island, where a group of students from the Li Po Chun United World College are being prepped for a full day of underwater research.

"Today, we're doing some citizen science, so we're collecting biodiversity data of 4marine ecosystems."

"As you're diving along with your buddy teams, you're going to be making a note of what you see as best as you can."

Local nonprofit, Living Seas Hong Kong set up the 5excursion for the school's 6coral monitoring group, a decades-old program that teacher Craig Hamilton says has 7evolved in recent years.

"It's developed a lot further into more coastal 8sustainability practices, such as oyster 9restoration and 10mangrove restoration, as well."

Today, the focus is on marine life 11identification, 12in support of a Living Seas Hong Kong project that aims to create more marine protected areas.

"We started the Living Seas marine life surveys during COVID-19, 2021. We thought that there wasn't enough data coming out highlighting the marine biodiversity hotspots in Hong Kong waters."

Only around 5% of Hong Kong's seas are currently designated as marine protected areas, a number David O'Dwyer would like to see increase rapidly.

"Hong Kong is a 13signatory on the 14convention biodiversity, which has set a target of 30% of seas by 2030. So there actually still needs to be more. And marine protected areas are important because the seas here are a fantastic resource, but it's under threat and it's been under a lot of stress for many years. Too much fishing has been going on, too much damaging things happening in the environment."