The research on modeling of reverberation and noise in shallow sea based on symmetry Alpha stable distribution was made. The forming process and non-Gaussian characteristics of shallow sea reverberation were analyzed. The theory of symmetry Alpha stable distribution was used to model the reverberation, and the validity of model was verified by the matchable degree between the probability density distribution of reverberation’s instantaneous scales as well as the envelopes and Alpha stable process. The signal detection methods in the reverberation based on symmetry Alpha stable theory were studied. Three methods for detection were proposed and tested by simulation. The advantages and weakness of the methods were analyzed by their performance, model precision and the effect of model precision to performance validated. 