In order to break through the constraints of operation environment, labor force and other factors on the fishery development, solve the current problems of low visibility in underwater fishing and low resolution of robot identification, and promote the transformation and upgrading of the fishery toward the modernization, the development trend of key technologies of underwater robot vision system at home and abroad is sorted out and analyzed in an academic perspective to provide reference for the related research. Based on the CiteSpace software, the literature samples from the databases of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and core databases of Web of Science are selected respectively, the visualization analysis in quantity of published articles, keyword co-occurrence map, keyword timeline map, etc., is completed, and the operation environment and vision system technology of underwater fishing robot are expounded. The quantity of published articles and keyword timeline map show that the research and development of key technologies of underwater robot vision system at home and abroad both go through the initial stage, exploration stage and growth stage. The keyword co-occurrence map shows that the human-computer interaction, recognition algorithm design and other aspects are the hot spots of relative research on the underwater robot vision system. In the future, the development of underwater robot vision system for fishing operation should focus on the intelligence and autonomy, and the special stress should be laid on solving many difficult problems such as object detection optimization, aquatic organism database establishment, and digital system construction.