3D measurement of underwater targets could recover 3D morphology of objects/scenes in water, which has extensive application prospects in the fields of submarine map drawing, underwater resource exploration, and marine archaeology et al. 3D reconstruction based on stereoscopic vision is playing a more and more important role in the field of measurement due to its incomparable advantages, such as high automation, rapid accuracy and non-contact. However, its application in underwater target detection is limited by the complex underwater environment, the absorption and scattering of light in the water and so on, which will seriously affect the quality of the image collection. In this paper, a 3D reconstruction method of underwater target based on multi view stereo vision technology was studied. A 3D profilometry system which works underwater was set up. The collection of multi-view image data is completed by a single camera and a rotating device. Firstly, camera's back projection model is used to calibrate the motion and parameters of the underwater vision system. Secondly, the underwater target is fixed on the rotating device, and a series of images under different viewpoints are collected. Then, feature detection and matching were carried out, and dense surface point clouds were generated by several steps of expansion and filtering operations. Finally, based on the generated dense point cloud, the 3D geometric mesh model of the target is obtained by using the Poisson reconstruction method. Color and texture are fused into the 3D mesh model to get the target with high fidelity. © 2018 SPIE.