I was getting ready to take a giant stride from my dive boat moored at Bloody Bay Wall when I heard an anguished cry (followed by a strong expletive) from the back of the boat. There was my dive buddy, all geared up, with his digital point-and-shoot housed camera in his hand. He’d just taken it from the rinse bucket and now the housing was half-full of water. "Damn housing," he said. "It ruined my camera."

Well, he was half right. The camera was no doubt ruined. There is little hope that it will be cost-effective to repair a $400 point-and-shoot digital camera after it has been submerged in water. In this case, it was fresh water from a rinse tank, and not nearly as corrosive as salt water. But still, I’ve seen the phrase "beyond economical repair" scribbled on too many work orders for too many cameras over the years to believe there was hope for this one. But he could hardly blame the housing for this one. Knowing that the housing worked fine all week previously, and now flooded while floating on the surface of the rinse tank, did not bode well for my friend in terms of a warranty replacement. Sure enough, a quick glance at the housing showed the main O-ring was outside of its groove when the camera back was closed, allowing a portal for the water to rush inside. Uh-oh: user error. Fortunately, it was the last day of his trip, and so my buddy pulled the digital memory card from the wet camera, dried it out (all the images were fine), and wrote it off to experience. Here are a few of the lessons we underwater photographers can take away from his experience:

Pre-test for Leaks

This is a protocol as important for a $7,000 Seacam as it is for a $130 Fantasea. The housing should always be taken under water for the first time without a camera inside. Most housings have been pressure-tested before leaving the factory, but still, the ability to withstand a static test to 250 feet does not answer the question of what happens once buttons are pushed or dials turned while under pressure. Each of the controls will have O-rings on a shaft, and these can leak water. On a very early prototype of a housing I tested, the push buttons actually squirted water inside every time they were depressed. This was an old film housing, and now the controls are far more sophisticated, but an O-ring still has to go in a groove on a shaft. If an O-ring fails to seat properly, it can lead to catastrophic results, making the in-water pre-test essential. Realize, however, that the empty space inside the housing where the camera should go provides significant buoyancy. I generally wrap a small lead weight in a washcloth (to keep the weight from banging around) to make the housing easier to handle on the bottom. I then operate every control on the housing that might ever be pushed, pulled, toggled or twisted. If it is dry when I come up, then I trust the housing.

Be Obsessive About Your O-rings

Service O-rings in Bright Light
Working in a dimly lit cabin is a sure recipe for disaster, sooner or later.

Use the Recommended O-ring Lubricant
Some lubes can cause O-rings to swell out of shape, and others may be so slippery the O-ring is difficult to hold into the groove. Each manufacturer has a specific brand of grease that it recommends and sells for its product. Use it.

Replace O-rings Every Couple of Years
I know some say to replace O-rings annually, and for the modest cost of a set of O-rings, that may be good advice. But I rarely get around to it each year and find my issues are more commonly of the dog-hair variety than actual O-ring fatigue.

Get a Helping Hand
Have your camera handed down to you from the dive deck rather than jumping in with it.

Observe the Depth Restrictions of Your Gear
Most modern camera gear is rated for depths far greater than you’ll need to go. Even an inexpensive acrylic housing for a small digital is probably rated to 130 feet, and can likely be used significantly deeper than that. But the rated depths are a reasonable guideline for photographers to use.

So, you did everything right and it still flooded. What next?

Determine Whether the Camera Can Be Saved

That is the first and most important step. If there has been a big flood, there will likely be so much damage to the camera’s electronics that it will be beyond repair. But, if the camera is a digital SLR, maybe the lens can be salvaged. At any rate, dry it off, take the batteries out (it’s very important that you do so immediately!), and let it air dry. I often set a flooded camera in a cardboard box on its side and shoot medium-heat air from a hair dryer to expedite the drying process. The box creates a heated cabinet to dry the camera more uniformly. If your media is a microdrive and it gets wet, it will likely be lost as it too has electronic components. However, compact flash and secure digital cards are extraordinarily robust and they will probably be perfectly fine after being dried.

Service the Housing

Aside from the moisture alarm, if it has one, there isn’t too much inside the housing that will get hurt by short-term water intrusion. A massive flood might affect the viewfinder optics, but it would have to be a pretty drastic flood. Usually you can just dry the housing, blow it out with compressed air from a scuba cylinder and be ready to shoot again. Of course, only if your camera wasn’t damaged or you have a spare.

Carry a spare

I use the 16.7-megapixel Canon EOS1DsMKII as my housed camera, and carrying a spare $8,000 camera in the event one floods is a bit too expensive. Fortunately, I also own a 1DMKII for topside work. This eight-megapixel version is exactly the same size as its higher-resolving sibling, and so if I were to have technical issues of any kind, I could swap them out and still go to work. The Nikon D2X likewise has a less expensive, same-sized twin (D2H) that will work in the housing, but these examples are the exception rather than the rule. Generally, you would need an exact clone to have it work in your housing. So, while prudent, this may not be a practical solution.