Efficient YOLOv11 with a FasterNet Backbone and Attention for Multi-Class Underwater Object Detection in Nearshore Waters

Underwater multi-class object detection in nearshore waters is essential for intelligent cleaning operations and ecological monitoring. However, strong reflection and scattering interference, color attenuation, frequent occlusion, and non-rigid deformation often cause fine-grained information loss and feature misalignment in conventional detectors, leading to missed and false detections. To address these challenges, we propose an enhanced YOLOv11 framework integrating FasterNet and attention mechanisms. Specifically, we include FasterNet to replace the YOLOv11 baseline backbone to improve fine-grained feature preservation while reducing computational redundancy. Furthermore, a Deformable Underwater Attention Module (DUAM) is introduced to capture local texture variations and deformation-aware features, enhancing discrimination among heterogeneous categories. Additionally, a Submerged Occlusion-Aware Head (SOAH) is designed to recalibrate features based on occlusion visibility, improving the detection of small-scale and partially occluded objects in the high-resolution P2 layer. Performance gains mainly stem from the recalibration strategy and its synergy with multi-scale optimization objectives. Experiments on a nearshore underwater multi-class dataset (8610 images across 40 classes) show that the proposed method increases mAP from 66.9% to 82.3%, achieving a 15.4-point improvement over baseline YOLOv11, with superior robustness under complex backgrounds.