As an ex-Michiganer (a really ex-Michaganer, we're talking 25 years, and I never dove the great lakes), if you're in Sault-Saint Marie, the first question is what is your normal diving situation? Are you diving the north side of Michigan or Huron, or Lake Superior? What's the viz? How bad is the turbidity? A stobe is priceless if you're shooting close in without much turbidity, in my opinion its much more valuable than the high pixel count of some cameras, provided you're good enough to get close to your target. But if you're shooting wide angle type shots, the strobe isn't worth anything for shots outside of a few feet, you really need manual white balance, aperture, and shutter speed for that (or a hell of a lot of natural light if you're going to use an automatic mode). I have a C5050 with an external strobe. I love it compared to my first camersa (a Canon S50 with no external strobe). If I had it to do over again, I would have preferred to have spent the money on the C5050 and an external strobe in the first place, and skipped the S50. There are a lot of posters in Scubaboard that have galleries - you should look at the gallery's of assorted posters that specify the camera type they used. If you like what you see for the Sealife, and its in conditions similar to what you're diving in, by all means get it. If you don't like the exampels form the Sealife, but do like the higher end cameras, maybe you ought to reconsider.
The second question is, how serious are you about photography and diving? If you know you're serious about it, skip the "beginner" camera, you'll eventually want a more advanced camera anyway. The price you're looking at is reasonable, but would you want to spend $500+ on something you'll eventually want to throw away anyway? These days, I'd be looking at a C8080 - you don't have to be very close to get a reasonable "print" size (I usually want something at 1280x1042 for screen wallpaper, and that is additionally more than enough for the typical 4x6 print), giving you a lot of room for "mistakes", and the price is not unreasonable. Keep in mind that many people would consider me rich out the *****. So, you might want to consider used/new 5 Megapixel cameras like the 5050 or 5060 with an external strobe, which give you a lot of room for recovering from imperfections (which you will have even if you're an advanced photographer, an intermediate with the photograph burr up your *** like me, let alone a beginner). If you know you'll seriously get into underwater photograpy, and can't afford any of the prosumer alternatives right now, you might want to consider saving up for the better camera instead of trying to do things on the cheap. If you don't think you're going to be ultra-serious about underwater photography, I've seen some pretty good shots with the Sealife, its a good value.
Also remember that you need to consider spending some money on a decent PC photo-editor program if its not included with the camera. No matter how good you are, you can almost always make your photo better by clipping it and doing some slight modifications for contrast and color balance with a photo editor, especially if you're a beginner (and photo editing is not "cheating", you should be striving to make yourself happy with pictures that allow you to remember your wonderful dives, not impress others, don't let anyone convince you othewise). Photo-elements comes with a lot of cameras, I don't know if it comes with the Sealife. I myself have been using JASC (or is it Corel now) Paint Shop Pro 9.0, but that's still running 75-100 bucks without an upgrade depending on where you look. If the Sealife doesn't include a good photo-editor, its an extra cost to add in, and may make some of the prosumer cameras more competitive.
