A liveaboard is the best way to dive a lot in a short time, and it is also the most hostile environment your gear will meet all year. For seven days your camera, your dive computer, your torches and your chargers live on a moving steel or wooden boat where everything is wet, salty, hot on deck, air-conditioned below, and shared with twenty other people who are all doing exactly what you are doing. 🤿🚢
Most of the damage is not dramatic. Nobody drops a housing into the sea on day one. What actually happens is quieter: a salt crust that was never rinsed off, a card reader left on a wet camera table, a power bank charged under a pillow, a phone that rode the tender in an open pocket, a regulator that arrived with a bent hose because the bag was tossed onto a conveyor. By day four the trip is still wonderful, but the kit is already losing the argument.
This guide goes through ten ways gear gets wrecked on a dive boat and what experienced liveaboard divers do about each one. It is written for a typical week on a Red Sea, Maldives or similar warm-water route, but nearly all of it applies to any multi-day boat trip. Many divers from Europe book exactly this kind of trip in autumn and winter, which is why it is useful to read it before you pack rather than on the plane.
One honest note before we start. We sell hard cases, so we should say plainly that a big wheeled hard case is usually the wrong thing to bring aboard a liveaboard, because cabins are tiny and most operators ask for soft, foldable bags that can be stowed in a locker. A hard case belongs on the journey to the boat, or on shore if the operator offers storage. What belongs inside your cabin duffel is a handful of small, sealed cases that protect the specific things that cannot afford a bad day. That is the theme running through the whole article.
Peli cases are built to keep gear dry and protected in transit, in the rain, on a boat deck and in a bag. They are not diving equipment and must never be taken underwater; nothing in this article suggests otherwise.
Part 1: The boat itself 🚢
1. The cabin is smaller than your packing plan
The first thing that breaks on a liveaboard is the packing plan. A typical cabin is a bunk or two, a narrow gap to stand in and a locker that was designed for soft bags. A rigid suitcase has no flexibility: it cannot be squashed under a bunk, it cannot be wedged into a corner, and in a rolling sea it becomes a slow-moving obstacle for you and your cabin mate.
Operators know this, which is why almost every booking guide tells you to bring a duffel or a backpack and to leave rigid luggage at home or in the hotel. Some boats will store extra bags in a hold or ashore, so ask when you book rather than when you arrive. The practical consequence for your gear is that the duffel becomes your whole system: cushioned only by the clothes around the fragile things, compressed by whatever else is stacked on top, and often handled by crew who are loading forty bags in a hurry.
What divers do about it: they stop trusting the duffel for anything that cannot take a crush. The camera body, the dive computer, the spare torch, the cards, the passport and the medication go into small hard cases first, and the duffel is packed around those. The small cases are the skeleton; the clothes are the padding. A compact hard case is also easy to pull out and keep with you when the duffel disappears into the hold for a transfer.
The practical rule: the smaller the case, the more places it fits. A micro case that fits in a day pack is worth more on a boat than a larger case that has to stay in the hotel.
2. Salt creep on the dive deck
Salt is the real enemy of a liveaboard, and it works slowly enough that you will not notice it until the damage is done. Every surface on the dive deck is wet with sea water, then dried by sun and wind, then wet again. Anything you leave there for a few hours collects a thin crust of salt crystals that sits in every seam, every hinge and every button.
The damage pattern is predictable. Zip pullers seize first. Hinges and latches get stiff. Metal clips on bags and straps corrode. Camera dials stick. And the crystals are abrasive, so a dry wipe of a lens port or a screen with a salty cloth scratches rather than cleans.
Experienced divers treat the deck as a place where gear is used, not stored. The rule is simple: nothing stays out there that does not have to. Between dives, kit goes into a lidded box, a bag or a case in the shade, and anything electronic gets rinsed, dried and put away rather than left on the bench. A case with a proper seal makes this easy because you can close the lid on a small item and know that spray from the next wave or a splash from the next diver will not reach it.
What to carry: a small case for the things you reach for between dives, such as spare O-rings, silicone grease, a multi-tool, a spare mask strap, defog and a cloth. These are the small items that go missing on a busy deck, and they are exactly the ones you want when a strap breaks ten minutes before a dive.
3. The camera table and the rinse tank
If you have never been on a liveaboard with underwater photographers, the camera table is a revelation. It is a long, shared bench, usually under cover, usually in the shade, with a rinse tank for housings and a few towels. It is also where more camera accidents happen than anywhere else on the boat.
The classic mistakes are almost always the same. A housing is rinsed and put on the table with the port facing down. A dome is left on the edge. A fibre-optic cable is trodden on. A tray is knocked by a passing diver. A camera is taken out of the housing on the table and a drop of water runs in while the back is open. None of these is dramatic; each can cost a trip's worth of pictures.
Photographers who do many boat trips develop habits that sound fussy and save hardware: rinse once, dry thoroughly, open the housing only on a dry towel in a dry corner, and never open it while it is still wet from a rinse. They keep the camera body in its own case while the housing is open, so the body is never exposed to splash, and they put the O-rings, grease and spare parts in a small sealed case rather than loose in a bag.
Take a look at our guide to hard cases for camera gear if you want the full logic of how to protect a body and lenses on the move. On the boat, the principle is smaller: give the camera a hard, sealed home whenever it is not in the housing.
4. The tender ride: spray, splash and the open pocket
Most liveaboard trips involve at least one ride in a tender or RIB: from the pier to the boat, between the boat and a snorkelling spot, or to a shore excursion. This is a short ride, usually five to fifteen minutes, but it exposes anything you carry to spray, wet seats and a surface that moves.
The things that suffer are the ones people forget to protect: phones in a pocket, wallets, passports, a camera in a shoulder bag. A single bucket of spray is enough to soak all of them. This is where a small sealed case does most of its work, because it takes ten seconds to put the phone, the wallet and the key in a case and clip it inside the bag, and it takes a very bad day to get them wet after that.
If you want the longer discussion, we compared the two options in waterproof case or dry bag: 9 situations where only one works. For a short tender ride the answer is often both: a dry bag for the bulky things and a small case for the fragile ones.
Part 2: Power, water and memory 🔋
5. Lithium batteries and the crowded charging station
A liveaboard is a floating charging station. Cameras, strobes, torches, computers, phones, power banks and drone batteries all want power, and the boat has a limited number of sockets, often on a shared bench in the saloon or on the camera deck. This is where good habits matter more than any product.
The key rules are the ones most operators and manufacturers repeat: charge on a hard, non-flammable surface and never under a pillow or on a bunk; do not leave batteries charging unattended overnight if the operator asks you not to; use the charger that came with the device; and keep a log of which batteries are charged so nothing is charged twice. Damaged, swollen or hot batteries should be taken out of use and shown to the crew.
The flight is the other half of the story. As a general rule set by the dangerous-goods regulations that airlines follow, spare lithium batteries and power banks go in the cabin, not in the checked bag, with their terminals protected from short-circuit, and batteries above 100 Wh need airline approval (with a hard ceiling of 160 Wh for passengers). Several airlines have also added their own limits on how many power banks you may carry and whether you can use them in flight. Rules differ by carrier and change often, so check your airline before you fly rather than relying on a blog post, including this one. We keep a longer explainer on power banks in carry-on baggage.
What divers do: they keep spare batteries in a small hard case with each battery in its own compartment or in a sleeve, so terminals never touch metal. The case goes in the cabin bag for the flight and in the cabin locker on the boat. It sounds fussy, but a single loose battery in a pocket with keys is exactly how an avoidable incident starts.
6. O-rings, grit and the flooded housing
The most expensive single accident on a dive trip is a flooded camera housing, and the cause is usually a speck of grit, a hair or a bad O-ring. The housing seal has to be clean and lightly lubricated; anything else is a risk.
The rules photographers swear by are old and boring. Inspect the O-ring every time the housing is opened. Clean it with a lint-free cloth. Lubricate it sparingly, because too much grease collects grit. Store spare O-rings clean and flat rather than loose in a bag where they pick up sand and lint. And carry a spare, because the one that fails will always be the one you cannot replace on a boat.
A small sealed case is the right place for this kit. In one place you keep the spare O-rings, the grease, the cloth and a small brush, and you know that when you open the case the contents are clean. It is the same logic as a surgeon's instrument tray: not complicated, just reliably clean.
A reminder, because it matters: the case protects your spares in transit and on deck. It is not a housing and must never go underwater.
7. Humidity, condensation and the cold cabin
Liveaboards have a strange climate. The deck is hot, humid and salty. The cabin is cooled by air conditioning to a temperature that makes the whole boat feel like a refrigerator by comparison. Anything that moves between the two, a camera, a lens, a tablet, a torch, collects condensation, sometimes enough to fog the inside of a lens.
The damage is slow. Fungus on lens coatings, corrosion on contacts, and a musty smell in everything that lived in a closed, damp bag are the long-term versions. The short-term version is a screen that fogs up when you take it out on deck and cannot be used for ten minutes.
What helps: let gear acclimatise in a closed case for a few minutes before opening it, put silica gel sachets in the case and renew them, never seal a wet item in a case, and dry everything before it goes in. A sealed case holds whatever moisture is inside when you close it, so closing it on damp kit makes the problem worse rather than better. We wrote about this in detail in are Peli cases really waterproof, which covers what an IP67 seal does and does not do.
8. Dive computers, torches and the small things that go missing
The most common loss on a liveaboard is not the expensive camera. It is the small item that was put down for a second: a dive computer on the bench, a torch on a rail, a surface marker buoy, a lighter, a mask strap, a pair of sunglasses. Twenty divers using the same deck all day produce a surprising amount of lost property.
Divers who do many trips avoid this with a habit: every small item has a home. The computer lives in a small case or on the wrist, the torch lives in a pocket or a bag, and nothing sits on the bench between dives. If you give your small things a sealed case with a bright colour, you can find it from across the deck.
A small case in a distinctive colour, with your name on it, also solves the problem of identical black kit bags. On a boat where twenty duffels look the same, a yellow or orange case is the thing you can spot in a second.
Our guide to the smallest cases in the range, micro cases, small Protectors and compact Storms, explains which size suits which item.
9. Memory cards, readers and the nightly backup
A week of diving can generate hundreds of gigabytes of photos and video. The thing that goes wrong is not the camera; it is the workflow. A card is formatted before it has been backed up. A reader is left on a wet bench. A portable drive is dropped. A laptop is left open next to a rinse tank.
Experienced underwater photographers follow a simple routine each night: card into the reader, files copied to two destinations, check that the files open, and only then does the card go back in the camera. The cards and the drive live in a small sealed case, never loose in a pocket. The case is the safe place, and it travels with you rather than staying in the cabin.
A few specifics help. Label cards by day so you never format one that has not been copied. Keep the reader and cable in the same case as the cards so nothing gets separated. And do the backup in the saloon or the cabin, not on the camera deck where a splash can reach the laptop.
10. The airport leg: regulators, torches and the checked bag
The last way to wreck your kit is before you even reach the boat. A liveaboard trip usually starts with a flight, often a low-cost one with tight weight limits, and a transfer in a minibus or a pickup. Gear that survives a week on a boat can be damaged in the first six hours.
The usual victims are regulators (hoses bent, first stages knocked), dive computers (screens cracked by the weight of other bags), torches (switches pressed, batteries drained or, worse, activated in the hold) and cameras. The fix is old and effective: fragile and valuable items travel in the cabin bag, in a hard case if possible; heavier, tougher items such as fins, wetsuit and BCD go in the checked bag.
Check the baggage rules for your airline before you pack. We have a plain-language explainer on what you can pack in checked baggage, and the packing list in a dive trip packing list and guide is a good checklist to start from. Regulators and torches in particular are worth checking with the airline; rules on torches with removable batteries vary.
Small cases for the things that must stay dry and flat 🔒
Part 3: Choosing the right case for each job 🧰
Ten ways to wreck your kit is a lot of ways, but the solutions are surprisingly short. Most of them come down to three decisions: what to put in a case, how big the case should be, and which part of the trip each case is for. This part turns the list above into a packing system.
The three-layer system
Divers who pack well for liveaboards think in three layers. The inner layer is small sealed cases, one for each category of fragile or valuable item: power, memory, documents and phone, spares. They live inside the duffel and come out when you need them. The middle layer is the duffel or backpack that goes on the boat. The outer layer is whatever protects the whole bag on the way to the airport: a hard case for the camera and housing, or a carry-on case for everything you do not want in the hold.
The advantage of the system is that every layer has a clear job. When something goes wrong, you know which layer failed. And if the boat does not allow rigid luggage, you simply leave the outer layer in the hotel, and the inner layer goes with you.
What belongs in a small case
- Keys, cards and cash: the smallest case. Easy to clip inside the bag.
- Phone, passport copy and boarding passes: a flat case. It rides the tender and the minibus.
- Memory cards, reader and a small drive: a micro case with foam or a divider.
- Spare O-rings, grease and cloth: a small case with a lid you can open on deck without tipping everything out.
- Spare batteries: each in its own slot or sleeve so terminals never touch metal.
- A compact torch and spare bulbs or straps: a case sized for the torch, not much bigger.
What belongs in a bigger case
A camera body, lenses and a housing are the typical content of a bigger case, and the typical journey is the one that matters most: the flight and the transfer. A hard carry-on case keeps the kit in the cabin where you can see it, which is where most photographers want it. A deeper case can take the housing with its ports and arms attached, which saves reassembly time on the boat.
Think about what you will do on arrival. If you plan to leave the big case at the hotel or with the operator ashore, pack the cabin duffel from the inner layer and let the big case do the long-distance journey on its own. If the boat will store the case for you, take it; if it will not, leave it behind and bring less.
The foam inside a case matters too. Pick-and-pluck foam is useful for odd shapes, dividers and padded organisers suit camera kit, and a lid organiser is perfect for cables, cards and documents. Ask yourself how often you will change the layout. If it changes every trip, dividers are more forgiving than cut foam.
Bigger cases for the journey: camera, housing and carry-on kit ✈️
Checklist: the liveaboard gear-protection list ✅
Before you book:
- Ask the operator about luggage rules: soft bags only, storage ashore, size limits on the boat.
- Ask about charging: how many sockets, which voltage, whether chargers are allowed in the cabin overnight.
- Ask about the camera deck: rinse tanks, drying space, tables, whether a separate camera room is provided.
- Check your airline for baggage weight, power bank limits and torch rules.
In the duffel, in small sealed cases:
- Keys, cash, cards: smallest case, clipped inside.
- Phone and documents: flat case, goes on every tender ride.
- Memory cards, reader and drive: one case, labelled by day.
- Spare O-rings, grease and cloth: one case, closed on deck between dives.
- Spare batteries: one case, each battery separated, terminals protected.
- Torch and spares: one case, sized for the torch.
On the boat, every day:
- Rinse once, dry thoroughly, and put electronics away before they sit on deck.
- Open housings only on a dry towel, in a dry corner, never straight from the rinse tank.
- Charge on a hard surface, never under a pillow, and do not leave chargers running while you sleep if the operator asks you not to.
- Back up the cards each night to two destinations before formatting anything.
- Let gear acclimatise in a closed case before opening it after a move from the cool cabin to the hot deck.
On the way home:
- Rinse and fully dry everything before it goes into a case.
- Replace silica gel and check the O-ring seals on every case.
- Check each battery for swelling or heat before you fly.
- Keep cameras, computers and spare batteries in the cabin bag.
FAQ ❓
Can I bring a hard case on a liveaboard?
Sometimes. Many operators ask for soft, foldable bags because cabin space is tight, and some will store a hard case in a hold or ashore. Ask before you book. If rigid luggage is not allowed, take small hard cases that fit inside a duffel instead.
Are Peli cases waterproof enough for a boat trip?
Peli cases have a sealed lid and a rubber O-ring, and the micro and Protector cases are designed to keep water out when the case is closed properly. That makes them suitable for spray, rain and a wet deck. They are not diving equipment and must not be used underwater.
What should I do with batteries on a liveaboard?
Charge them on a hard surface, never under a pillow, and follow the boat's rules about overnight charging. Carry spare batteries in the cabin on the flight, with terminals protected, and check your airline's rules on power banks and watt-hour limits before you travel.
How do I protect a camera housing on the way to the boat?
Travel with the camera and housing in a hard case in the cabin, not in the hold. Remove and pack the O-rings separately and fit them again at the boat on a clean, dry surface. A lightweight carry-on case with dividers or a padded organiser keeps the parts apart.
What is the most common mistake on a dive boat?
Leaving things on the deck. Salt, spray and other divers do more damage than any dramatic accident. Give every small item a home, and put it back there between dives.
The short version 🏁
A liveaboard is not hard on gear because anything dramatic happens. It is hard because everything happens slowly and all at once: salt, humidity, heat, shared benches, shared sockets and a lot of hurry. The divers who bring their kit home in good shape are rarely the ones with the most expensive gear; they are the ones with the best habits. They give every fragile item a sealed home, they keep the deck clear, they charge carefully, they back up every night and they check the rules before they fly.
If you want a starting point, begin with the four small cases in the first block above and one bigger case for the journey. That is enough to cover most of the ten problems in this article. And if you are building a kit for a specific camera, torch or housing, send us the dimensions and we will tell you which case fits before you order. 🤿
