Underwater Camera Insurance

If you love taking underwater photos or video, you’ll know that underwater camera and video gear is not cheap. Once you progress beyond the (undeniably awesome) compact point and shoot cameras to have greater control over your underwater shots and filming, things start to get majorly expensive. The cameras and camcorders themselves are pricey, but the underwater housings and strobes are often three to four times even more expensive. Underwater camera gear is usually NOT covered on standard scuba diving insurance which focuses on health risks. There is often a small amount guaranteed in the event of damage or loss of equipment, but it’s usually only a couple hundred dollars maximum.

Besides the worry about loss or theft on the way to and from a dive trip, the main fear of using underwater camera and video rigs is flooding the housing and destroying the camera or camcorder inside as well as the interior electronics of the housing itself. The housing can usually be repaired with a return trip to its manufacturer but the camera or camcorder will be a complete write-off and need to be replaced. Very few housing manufacturers cover flooding as part of their warranty unless it’s due to a manufacturing fault. While it’s painful to admit, equipment floods are usually due to user error during assembly of the gear. Therefore having underwater camera insurance that covers “unexplained flooding” – that is, allows for user error – is essential.