A test aquarium was built to perform and simulate different marine environment to optimize laser imaging of submerged targets. The setup enable to study the correlation between the detection angle, the target surface topology and color, water turbidity, and laser type at different depths and backgrounds. A theoretical model of the detection process was tested using MATLAB simulation. The system was able to simulate light extinction of the real deep and shallow aqua environments due to plankton chlorophyll as well as the effect of clay and mud water turbidity. The used dummy targets are approximately 1/500 of the real submarines and naval mines. These targets were illuminated by several laser wavelengths in order to identify the targets with different color and shapes. The setup permits to test the efficiency of different target camouflage versus optical detection.