Those changes are made by the Pelagos mod. The author of that mod insists the tech tree changes and surface limitations are vital to his mod. Someone made a tweaks mod to undo the changes, and he marked the tweak mod incompatible. You will have to take it up with them or uninstall Pelagos.
Edit: just realized you already disabled it.
disabling pelago caused severl issues with cargo ships primarily the water transport tec is gone and cant be researched resulting in the entire mod being locked by hidden tec overseas poles tec is also missing from the list the beter option would likly be starting the game with out pelagos mod then turning it on after all the ocean world tec is unlocked im gona test tat theroy
tested and thats the best option so far but im not liking the idea of having to start over