mpoletti said:
At some level, every picture is digitaly altered to compress to our screens, some people just take things to an extreme.
That's a really important point. Every photograph flattens the dynamic range and the choice of how to flatten it is an artistic one, often hidden by the camera but adjustable in post processing. Mark, it looks like you choose settings that increase the gamma (a decrease of "brightness" in many apps)? That separates the color channels producing strong saturation at the cost of lost detail in the darks. It's a great look for reef photos, IMO.