Since the 21st century, human exploration of marine resources deepens, the increasingly sophisticated manipulation tasks in unstructured underwater environment put forward higher requirements and challenges for submersibles' operational capability. Interacting with the surroundings with robotic arm is a very important manifestation of such capability. However, autonomous underwater manipulation at this stage is yet in its infancy and various underwater intervention missions still rely highly on manual control, which is very likely to lead to inefficiency in continuous operation. Hence, improving the autonomy in underwater vehicle’s manipulation ability is an inevitable trend of marine equipment in the future. Overviews and existing problems of underwater manipulation are introduced in detail in this paper, and the enormous potential of autonomous underwater manipulation in ocean engineering and other fields is illustrated by comparing the limitations of traditional remotely controlled approaches. The current status of autonomous underwater manipulation is systematically reviewed and main limiting factors and challenges that constrain the development of this domain are analyzed, and the key technologies need to be developed towards industry application are pointed out. Finally, prospects for further development of this area in the future are made.