Warm colour flash and sharks

This summer I planned to dive at the Azores, among others with blue sharks and mako's. Does the advise to shoot with warm colour flash (INON plus 4600 K diffusers in my case) in blue water  also hold for shark photography? Adding a yellow hue to the white bellies of the sharks sounds counterintuitive. 

I think I post this question because I never fully understood the reason to flash 'warm' in blue water and 'cold' in green water. Is it just to get a pleasing contrast with the background? 

For all blue water wide angle I would use 4600°K diffusers, unless I need more strove power or control, in which case I would shoot without diffusers.

The reason for dong so is to enrich the saturation of the blue. I would also set my camera's WB setting to 4600°K. Cool flash color temperatures tend to wash out the richness of the blue.

In green water, you are (a) typically unable to turn strobes up much (b) only lighting a relatively close subject and (c) not lighting up big scenes or animals. I guess if you were diving in a green water areas and had the visibility to be able to light up big scenes with strobes, some kind of filter on the strobes would make sense, but this is a rare use case!

Thanks Adam, the reason is clear now, I'll put the diffusers on.

Last month I tried out my new flashes in green water and of course I was eager to look at their wide angle capabilities. Not unsurprisingly I got speckled results like his one, even with the flashes 1m apart. For now I concluded that I could have had better results if I had avoided to lighten up the green water (and pointed the left strobe further outwards). Yet  I like the green produced at the  standard 5500 K. 

11 hours ago, Floris Bennema said:

This summer I planned to dive at the Azores, among others with blue sharks and mako's. Does the advise to shoot with warm colour flash (INON plus 4600 K diffusers in my case) in blue water  also hold for shark photography? Adding a yellow hue to the white bellies of the sharks sounds counterintuitive. 

I think I post this question because I never fully understood the reason to flash 'warm' in blue water and 'cold' in green water. Is it just to get a pleasing contrast with the background? 

Yes if you shoot with warm strobes and WB back to neutral, the background water will be a richer blue as Adam says as the strobe only illuminates the shark, it doesn't illuminate the blue water.

Adam and Chris, both of you mention the WB. However I photograph in RAW so I never bother about the WB. Or is this a misconception?

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1 hour ago, Floris Bennema said:

Adam and Chris, both of you mention the WB. However I photograph in RAW so I never bother about the WB. Or is this a misconception?

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Presumably you have auto WB set in camera?, the raw processor reads this and uses it for the starting point for the preview you see before you start processing.  I find on my Olympus it's pretty close to start with, but if it's not you can make your shark neutral quite easily.

Yes indeed, my camera is set at auto WB.

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