A Lightweight Algal Bloom Detection Algorithm for Water Surfaces Based on Improved YOLOv26

Monitoring water surface algal blooms from surveillance perspectives faces challenges such as small objects, low texture contrasts, dynamic background interferences, and limited labeled datasets. In this study, we propose GECA-YOLOv26, a lightweight model that integrates Ghost Convolution (GhostConv) and Efficient Channel Attention (ECA) modules. First, the GhostConv lightweight module is introduced in the first layer of the YOLOv26 backbone, reducing parameters from 4608 to 2704 and achieving a 41% reduction in computational cost. Second, eight ECA modules are embedded at key locations after backbone downsampling and neck feature fusion to enhance feature representation and mitigate degradation caused by model lightweighting. Finally, the MuSGD optimizer is used for training, with adaptive modifications to resolve tensor shape conflicts with the ECA modules. Experimental results indicate that the model achieves a mAP50 of 82.16%. Compared with the YOLOv26 baseline, our model improves mAP50 by 6.42%, while mAP@0.5:0.95 decreases by 0.79% and inference speed reduces from 143 FPS to 123 FPS. The model also reduces parameters and size, achieving 5.19 MB and 1864 fewer parameters. Compared with YOLOv8, YOLOv10, and YOLOv11, the proposed model improves mAP50 by 2.12%, 5.99%, and 2.79%, respectively. To evaluate the stability of the results under small-sample conditions, we conducted 3-fold and 5-fold cross-validation experiments, which demonstrated that the model performs robustly across different folds and random seeds. Ablation studies further confirm the effectiveness of each module. Heatmap analysis demonstrates that the proposed model effectively highlights small object regions, remains robust under limited-sample conditions, and reduces model complexity. This study provides a novel solution for algal bloom detection in surveillance scenarios.