First thing you want to do is decide how much you can spend
from looking at a lot of reef Pics, Nikon, and Olympus mid to hi end cams rock
Those and the Fujifine pics are good, I shoot a kodak that does OK , it has 2.2 megapixel but digital zoom only

get at least 3x zoom. 2+ megapixels. Make sure it uses a standard format memory card, not something exotic
The more megapixels the finer image potential, but the fewer images stored on the cam. Most cams have a good and best pic quality setting you can choose, best uses more megapix so eats up memory
My kodak has 8megs built in thats good for approx 50 pix in good quality(OK snapshots) with a 32 meg Compact Flash I can store like 200 and with the 64 I can store about 400
FWIW most of the pix I have posted here are at good setting, the cam when I bought it was $220 not discounted and I paid too much, mine has no optical zoom, thats a must. IMO