Underwater imaging technology plays an important role in military, marine development and engineering applications. However, clear underwater images can hardly be obtained by traditional imaging methods due to the influence of absorption, scattering, turbulence, and complex interaction between light and matter in the propagation process. In recent years, underwater ghost imaging has gradually become a research hotspot. It uses a bucket detector without spatial resolution to obtain the spatial distribution of targets by the correlation algorithm. Compared with traditional array imaging, ghost imaging has the characteristics of high sensitivity, anti-interference and wide working wavelength, and it has prominent advantages in low light, special bands and increasing the detection distance of the imaging system. This paper reviews the research progress of underwater ghost imaging in recent years, focuses on its development process, optical path structure and key technologies, analyzes the factors affecting the quality of underwater ghost imaging and the improvement methods, and predicts the application directions of underwater ghost imaging.