We report the first near real-time inverted echo sounder (IES) observation in the South China Sea (Fig. 1). Although the first IES observation in the South China Sea was in 2005, and the near real-time IES observation module was first developed in 2012 (http://www.po.gso.uri.edu/dynamics/IES/hist.html), the real-time IES has never been deployed in the South China Sea until the reporting of observations in this study.