None of that light would ever reach your eyes for you to see it, though, right? Or am I missing something really obvious?

Maybe I should have elaborated a bit more. My original point was that it makes sense that the visible spectrum was colocated with the frequencies not readily absorbed by water.

Which is to say, eyes were made for seeing the light that was bouncing around in the sea (and not the frequencies that had already been absorbed).

So yes, the simplest answer you can imagine.

Also to the same point: eyes evolved to see the wavelengths where the Sun outputs the majority of its energy, which is a significant factor in its ability to penetrate water to any depth.

Right, that makes perfect sense. I'm mostly unsure of what tempestn said.

Yeah, if the water is the surroundings.

I was answering the broader question of not wanting light to penetrate "your surroundings" - ie the desk in front of me or walls around me. Would make life difficult if everything was transparent. Normally when one talks about "surroundings" it means that stuff, not the air (analogous to the water for marine life) both of which obviously need to be at least somewhat transparent for vision to be useful.