Cebu, Philippines

How are you processing the images? Did you shoot in RAW? I may be able to give you some tips on increasing clarity.

I use Lightroom.

On some (perhaps most) flash shots I end up reducing highlights to bring out details. Flash on fish and crustaceans can be very reflective. Your lionfish shot, for instance, could be improved.

To make cloudy water look clearer, I pull the blacks down until the histogram comes close to the left edge. Sometimes have to increase overall exposure as this darken things up, but it can make a big difference.

Here are shots from Roatan last year, mostly done with a Sony RX100 II and dual strobes, but some from a Canon s95 and a Canon s120 with no flash. http://www.cjcphoto.net/roatan2015/misc/index4.html

As an example of how you can clear things up with that Blacks slider,  here is a shot my wife took last year with a Canon s120 in kind of murky conditions in St Thomas.  (Unfortunately shot in JPG mode so post-processing was limited):

St Thomas - yes, the water looked like this pretty accurately, other than colors.

I took a shot of my wife about the same time, and the out-of-camera shot looked like the above.   However, after some post-processing I got this:

I find that the vast majority of my underwater shots need a good deal of post-processing, and typically I'll be doing this:

1. Adjust exposure, often increasing it, but sometimes decreasing if I overdid the flash.  Generally within +/- 1 stop.

2. Pull highlights way down, often 90-100% (in Lightroom).  This will bring out a lot of subtle details (christmas tree worms) and reduce reflections (fish, lobsters, etc.)

3. Pull shadows up - depends on the scene a lot.  Usually in the range of 10-40%

4. Pull blacks down until the left edge of the histogram almost hits the far left side.  Careful not to go too far.   This one greatly increases apparent clarity by reducing haze.

5. Play with clarity a bit (1-10), vibrance and saturation (maybe +5 each).

Before doing any of the above I try to set a 'good' white balance, as it makes a huge difference.  I generally use  the eye dropper tool on something close to the camera that is either white (corals, sand) or metallic (parts on a diver).   A lot of times I just fiddle until it 'looks good'.    It's extremely useful to shoot in RAW mode.