Extreme Sports Will Be The Killer App For Live Streaming (As Soon As Volcanoes Get Cell Phone Signals)

With a DSLR, a wetsuit, her oxygen tank and an iPhone, Catherine Capon and a photographer cruised by boat around the majestic Mexican island of Guadalupe. An environmental activist who travels the world writing and sharing footage of her adventures in nature, Capon had another goal beyond her traditional photography or filming: She wanted to be the first to live-stream herself swimming cageless with great white sharks.

Back in London, the creators of MyEye — the live-streaming app Capon had planned to use — anticipated her broadcast. Yet they knew it might never come. She’d hit the biggest roadblock to extreme sports live streaming: a decent mobile phone signal.

“It’s going to be difficult out in the middle of the ocean to get massive mobile phone signals,” Justin Mier, chief operating officer of MyEye, told International Business Times the week before the planned broadcast.

As she’d feared, Capon returned to shore with a few selfies and her regrets to the founders and her fans. She couldn’t even alert MyEye that there would be no live video to tune in to. “There unfortunately wasn’t enough signal to stream underwater,” Capon wrote in an email after the fact. “But I think that the ability to live-stream will become essential in extreme sports and adventure in bringing the viewer up close to the action.”

This article was originally published in the International Business Times