The invention belongs to the field of machine vision, and particularly relates to an underwater target tracking method based on particle filtering. By introducing an attraction degree improvement strategy, the problem that particle marginalization is serious due to the fact that the underwater illumination environment is complex is effectively solved; meanwhile, by means of the mode that the weight factor is associated with the particle development stage, the problem that search is limited due to the fact that the particle development initial stage is dense due to introduction of the attraction degree is solved, and the overall efficiency and precision of the algorithm are improved. According to the method, the weight factor tau is associated with the current particle development stage, sothat the particles can be endowed with higher search capability in the primary stage, automatic adjustment is carried out in the movement of each stage in the later stage, and the marginalization effect caused by particle discretization is effectively reduced.