Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not in the position to be an active modder at the moment), but wasn't there a thread a couple of months back that illustrated how you could set up different 'zones' in the ocean with different water colour settings? So for example you could have more appropriate water colours in the littoral areas of the caribbean, and so on.
There was even a picture of the imagemap the game used to define the zones.. but I can't find the thread.
Would be neat if someone picked up on it.