There may be a foot of a third!!!

About a month ago, I cleaned out our small plastic pond as it was really filthy. I found one newt and a frog in it and transferred them into our slightly larger plastic pond, only about a metre long, before filling it again.
Today, I noticed there were four newts in the smallest one and these are two of them
Not the clearest of photos, not helped by dust etc in/on the water.
But what is the best way to photograph underwater?
I switched to manual focus but that’s a bit of a lottery.
I tried putting the camera under water but that was a bit of a disaster ( I didn’t really)
Whatever, we seem to have quite a few newts about.