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arxiv: 2507.18967 · v1 · submitted 2025-07-25 · 💻 cs.CV · cs.AI· cs.LG

Underwater Waste Detection Using Deep Learning A Performance Comparison of YOLOv7 to 10 and Faster RCNN

Pith reviewed 2026-05-19 02:58 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.CV cs.AIcs.LG
keywords underwater waste detectionobject detectionYOLOv8deep learningmarine pollutioncomputer visionenvironmental monitoring
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The pith

YOLOv8 achieves 80.9% mAP for underwater waste detection, surpassing YOLOv7 to YOLOv10 and Faster R-CNN.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of several advanced object detection models for identifying various types of waste in underwater settings. Researchers trained and tested YOLOv7, YOLOv8, YOLOv9, YOLOv10, and Faster R-CNN on a dataset covering 15 waste classes in conditions with low visibility and changing depths. YOLOv8 delivered the best results at 80.9% mean average precision, credited to its anchor-free design and self-supervised learning capabilities. Such performance points to its usefulness in scaling up efforts to detect and remove pollution from oceans and rivers.

Core claim

Among the five object recognition algorithms examined, YOLOv8 proves most effective at recognizing materials in underwater situations, attaining a mean Average Precision of 80.9% on a 15-class dataset, thanks to its incorporation of improved anchor-free mechanisms and self-supervised learning.

What carries the argument

Comparative evaluation of YOLOv7 through YOLOv10 and Faster R-CNN models on an underwater waste dataset with 15 classes, highlighting YOLOv8's architectural advantages for precise detection in challenging marine environments.

If this is right

  • Enhances the accuracy and efficiency of underwater pollution monitoring programs.
  • Supports the development of more scalable systems for marine waste management.
  • Improves detection capabilities in low-visibility and variable-depth conditions common in real-world scenarios.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • Integration with robotic systems could automate waste collection in underwater environments.
  • Similar model comparisons might benefit detection tasks in other obscured settings like fog or dense vegetation.
  • Further optimization could focus on real-time processing speeds for deployment on underwater drones.

Load-bearing premise

The 15-class dataset collected under diverse underwater conditions adequately represents the variety of real-world waste and environments for the performance results to apply generally.

What would settle it

Evaluating the models on a separate underwater dataset from different locations or with additional waste categories where YOLOv8 no longer shows the highest mAP.

read the original abstract

Underwater pollution is one of today's most significant environmental concerns, with vast volumes of garbage found in seas, rivers, and landscapes around the world. Accurate detection of these waste materials is crucial for successful waste management, environmental monitoring, and mitigation strategies. In this study, we investigated the performance of five cutting-edge object recognition algorithms, namely YOLO (You Only Look Once) models, including YOLOv7, YOLOv8, YOLOv9, YOLOv10, and Faster Region-Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN), to identify which model was most effective at recognizing materials in underwater situations. The models were thoroughly trained and tested on a large dataset containing fifteen different classes under diverse conditions, such as low visibility and variable depths. From the above-mentioned models, YOLOv8 outperformed the others, with a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 80.9%, indicating a significant performance. This increased performance is attributed to YOLOv8's architecture, which incorporates advanced features such as improved anchor-free mechanisms and self-supervised learning, allowing for more precise and efficient recognition of items in a variety of settings. These findings highlight the YOLOv8 model's potential as an effective tool in the global fight against pollution, improving both the detection capabilities and scalability of underwater cleanup operations.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

3 major / 2 minor

Summary. The manuscript reports an empirical comparison of five object detection models—YOLOv7, YOLOv8, YOLOv9, YOLOv10, and Faster R-CNN—on a 15-class underwater waste dataset collected under conditions of low visibility and variable depths. It states that YOLOv8 achieves the highest mean Average Precision (mAP) of 80.9% and attributes this result to architectural elements including improved anchor-free mechanisms and self-supervised learning.

Significance. A well-controlled comparison of these models on underwater imagery could offer practical guidance for environmental monitoring and cleanup robotics. The current manuscript, however, provides no evidence that performance differences arise from the cited architectural features rather than uncontrolled differences in training protocols, making the central claim difficult to interpret or reproduce.

major comments (3)
  1. [Abstract] Abstract: The attribution of the 80.9% mAP to YOLOv8's 'improved anchor-free mechanisms and self-supervised learning' is unsupported. No section describes a unified training protocol (identical optimizer, epoch count, batch size, learning rate schedule, or data augmentation pipeline) applied to all five models; without such isolation, mAP gaps cannot be causally linked to architecture.
  2. [Methods/Experimental Setup] Methods/Experimental Setup (inferred from absence in Abstract and Results): The manuscript supplies no information on dataset partitioning, validation strategy, pre-training usage, or loss weighting. These details are load-bearing for any claim that one detector outperforms the others on the 15-class underwater task.
  3. [Results] Results: No error bars, standard deviations across runs, or statistical significance tests accompany the reported mAP values. A single scalar of 80.9% for YOLOv8 cannot be evaluated for robustness or superiority without these measures.
minor comments (2)
  1. [Title] Title: 'YOLOv7 to 10' is imprecise; it should explicitly list YOLOv7 through YOLOv10 for clarity.
  2. [Abstract] Abstract: The phrase 'self-supervised learning' is used without definition or citation in the context of YOLOv8; standard YOLOv8 training is supervised, so the term requires clarification or removal.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

3 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for the constructive feedback, which identifies important gaps in methodological transparency and statistical rigor. We address each major comment below and will revise the manuscript to strengthen reproducibility and support for our claims without overstating the current evidence.

read point-by-point responses
  1. Referee: [Abstract] Abstract: The attribution of the 80.9% mAP to YOLOv8's 'improved anchor-free mechanisms and self-supervised learning' is unsupported. No section describes a unified training protocol (identical optimizer, epoch count, batch size, learning rate schedule, or data augmentation pipeline) applied to all five models; without such isolation, mAP gaps cannot be causally linked to architecture.

    Authors: We agree that the abstract's attribution requires supporting details to establish a causal link. The manuscript states that models were 'thoroughly trained and tested' under similar conditions, but does not explicitly document a unified protocol. In the revision we will expand the Methods section with a table and description of the shared training configuration (optimizer, epochs, batch size, LR schedule, and augmentations) applied to all models, and we will revise the abstract to qualify the architectural attribution accordingly. revision: yes

  2. Referee: [Methods/Experimental Setup] Methods/Experimental Setup (inferred from absence in Abstract and Results): The manuscript supplies no information on dataset partitioning, validation strategy, pre-training usage, or loss weighting. These details are load-bearing for any claim that one detector outperforms the others on the 15-class underwater task.

    Authors: We acknowledge that these implementation details were omitted. The full manuscript text does not contain a dedicated experimental-setup subsection covering splits, validation, pre-training, or loss weighting. In the revised version we will add this information, specifying the train/validation/test partitioning ratios, any cross-validation procedure, use of COCO pre-trained weights, and class-balanced loss weighting for the 15 underwater waste categories. revision: yes

  3. Referee: [Results] Results: No error bars, standard deviations across runs, or statistical significance tests accompany the reported mAP values. A single scalar of 80.9% for YOLOv8 cannot be evaluated for robustness or superiority without these measures.

    Authors: We concur that single-run mAP values limit assessment of robustness. The current results section reports only point estimates. For the revision we will rerun the top-performing models with multiple random seeds to report mean mAP and standard deviation, and we will add a statistical comparison (e.g., paired t-test or Wilcoxon test) between YOLOv8 and the next-best model. If resource constraints prevent full multi-run experiments, we will explicitly note this limitation and qualify the superiority claim. revision: partial

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: purely empirical comparison with no derivations

full rationale

The paper reports mAP results from training YOLOv7–v10 and Faster R-CNN on a 15-class underwater dataset. No equations, derivations, or self-citations appear in the provided text. The claim that YOLOv8's 80.9% mAP stems from its architecture is an interpretive statement about observed results rather than a reduction of any prediction to fitted inputs or self-referential definitions. The work is self-contained as an empirical benchmark study.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

1 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The paper rests on standard assumptions of deep learning training and evaluation; no new axioms or entities introduced beyond the choice of models and dataset.

free parameters (1)
  • training hyperparameters
    Learning rates, batch sizes, and augmentation parameters fitted during model training on the underwater dataset.
axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Standard supervised learning assumptions hold for object detection on the collected underwater images.
    Invoked implicitly when reporting mAP as measure of effectiveness under low visibility conditions.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5783 in / 1021 out tokens · 45894 ms · 2026-05-19T02:58:19.502533+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

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Reference graph

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