The invention relates to a monocular camera-based sea surface distance measurement method and system, and the method comprises the steps: measuring the camera pose angle information of a monocular camera and the ship pose angle information of a ship, carrying out the calculation to obtain a camera rotation matrix and a ship rotation matrix, and according to the altitude of the camera, the camera rotation matrix and the ship rotation matrix, acquiring an internal parameter and a distortion parameter of a monocular camera, calculating to obtain a system rotation matrix and a system translation matrix, acquiring a pixel coordinate of an image shot by the camera, further converting the pixel coordinate into a sea surface physical coordinate according to the internal parameter and the distortion parameter of the monocular camera, the system rotation matrix and the system translation matrix, and completing data measurement between a target point and a ship. According to the invention, the problems of high distance measurement difficulty and large distance measurement error in a sea surface distance measurement scene are solved, measurement of data such as the distance between the target ship and the target point, the azimuth angle of the target ship and the width of the ship body in sea surface measurement is realized, and the accuracy of data measurement in sea surface distance measurement is improved.