Marine phytoplankton, as the most important primary producer, as the potential huge "blue carbon" of marine phytoplankton, it takes as the key parameters for carbon calculation, and can help on achieving the goals of the whole country's "carbon peak" and "carbon neutrality". Phytoplankton species vary greatly in cell structure, morphology and its abundance, thus the identification for marine phytoplankton has always been a hard and key task for the related studies. The requirements for innovation and development of the high-throughput gene sequencing, microfluidics, and high-sensitivity bioassay techniques on identification and rapid monitoring of marine phytoplankton become urgent and nonsubstitutable. Through a comprehensive analysis of the classical technical methods of phytoplankton identification and monitoring, the development of rapid identification and monitoring techniques and the progress of research applications, and a bibliometric analysis of the literature related to automatic phytoplankton monitoring using VOSviewer, we aim to provide help to researchers related to phytoplankton taxonomy and ecology to expand their research ideas and improve their research efficiency.