Hearing the instructor when in the pool, can IPhone or Apple Watch help?

iPhone and Apple Watch only use Bluetooth which won’t work well for this purpose at all. Bluetooth and Wi fi both operate in the 2 - 5 ish GHz range and are very very blocked by water. There might be a bespoke solution that operates in the MHz range and doesn’t have a digital connection which will need to be re-established every time the signal is blocked but I’m not aware of where you’d go to find such a thing. I’m guessing it will exist though as theres no technical reason it couldn’t be done and I’m sure you’re not the only one who would find it useful. Good luck.

I don’t think I’d try it because if the AirPods got wet, theres a good chance they wouldn’t survive. I know some people have put them through the washing machine but they aren’t rated for submersion. There’s a feature of iPhones called Live listen. You can find it in control centre. You might have to add hearing devices to control centre to find it but when you activate Live listen, it will play the microphone of the phone on your AirPods. It’s designed for people who are hard of hearing to get a microphone close to the person speaking. Also remember the range of AirPods is pretty good, over 10m but may not be enough for a large swimming pool. I hope that helps a little?

Looks like I was right, someone has thought of this. As I thought, it uses MHz range radio without any digital Bluetooth connections. It’s specifically designed for swimming, has a range of hundreds of feet and works up to 1m under the water so is probably in low hundreds of MHz range.

https://www.sonr.pro/