The Prince and Princess of Wales have released a slick clip showing them enjoying a scuba diving session in The Bahamas during their 2022 visit to Earthshot Prize winner Coral Vita.
Kate and Prince William, both 41, are filmed in their scuba gear while taking ‘part in a very special experience snorkelling around the beautiful reefs, and planting out new coral’.
The visit likely took place during the Prince and Princess’ eight-day tour of the Caribbean in March 2022.
Unseen footage from the trip – shared to the royal couple’s YouTube account yesterday evening – shows Kate diving into the sea, William planting coral and the pair swimming around and exploring.
The Prince also spoke to the cameras while on a nearby beach, explaining: ‘What we do in these next 10 years will impact the planet for the next thousand.
‘Being able to see the good coral and the degraded coral, being able to understand the difference between the two and what needs to go where, I think that was really really fascinating for me to kind of finally understand.
‘It’s quite technical how they do the coral farming and the research and so to actually see it all being screwed in and built up it’s been really fantastic.’
He added: ‘Right now obviously I’m stood on the beach where Coral Vita found out they won The Earthshot Prize in 2021 and so it’s wonderful to finally be here and actually experience everything around the Prize and feel like I’ve come around in a full circle.’
‘There’s limitless scope for what The Earthshot looks for,’ continued the Prince. ‘The whole point of it is a global platform to really raise the profile of smaller voices or extraordinary solutions that might not have made it onto the global stage just yet and say look this idea has got legs and we can build it and we can make it bigger and we can make it better.
‘If we want to have meaningful change and we want to repair our planet then these next 10 years are critical.
‘Time is of the essence now, it’s getting to a really serious crunch point where we can easily continue what we do and we will have a planet worse off in years and years to come, or we can change course and start to really think about how we’re going to repair, find the solutions, act and scale these solutions and we can be better off and in a healthier world, providing jobs and healthier outcomes for everyone if we can do that.
The video caption explained: ‘Coral Vita do incredible work to Revive Our Oceans by giving new life to dying coral reefs, farming corals on land before planting them into oceans.
‘This method sees coral grow up to 50 times faster than traditional methods. Coral is vital for maintaining a healthy ocean ecosystem.
‘As Earthshot Prize winners they received £1 million to scale their solution and help protect and restore our planet by 2030.’
Coral Vita’s chief reef officer, Sam Teicher, also featured in the 3.15-minute video and explained what winning the Earthshot Prize meant for the organisation.
He said: ‘Winning The Earthshot Prize is the greatest honour of my life. I honestly can’t believe it, it’s still quite surreal to have the support of some of the world’s leading environmental champions and experts and to be part of this community of environmental innovators and entrepreneurs is amazing.
‘It truly is and so it’s given us so much now to be able to scale our vision even further. We’re just trying to figure out how to do it best and do it bigger and better in the the most meaningful way possible that matters most for the reefs and all the communities around the world who depend upon them.’
He explained how coral farming is collecting corals out in the ocean, bringing them to the farm to grow and then going to sites they have already surveyed and planting the corals.
‘Then they grow and do their thing. We monitor it over time,’ said Sam. ‘It’s pretty amazing to be able to swim back out there and see these corals that have been planted slowly but surely coming back, with all the marine life around them starting to return.
‘There’s up to a billion people in around 100 countries and territories that depend on coral reefs and they’re under threat everywhere… Half the world’s coral reefs are already dead and we’re on track to lose over 90 per cent within the next 30 years.’
This isn’t the first time Kate and William have shared with fans a glimpse of them sea diving.
In March 2022, the couple went swimming with sharks as they praised the people of Belize for their work to look after the marine environment off its coast and took a dive to see the underwater wildlife for themselves.
They viewed nurse sharks – which are generally considered harmless to humans – as they donned scuba gear to explore the second-largest barrier reef in the world.
The pair were seen swimming alongside each other and giving the OK hand signal as they inspected the coral and marine life following a private invitation by the country’s government to see conservation work.
William said it had been ‘really fantastic’ and hailed the ‘wonderful work’ of those helping to ensure the coral and fish are protected, in a video posted to the official Kensington Royal Twitter account. The clip was posted at the end of the couple’s visit to Belize.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
