Photoshop :: Color Enhancing

Im working as a photo analyst for a scientific research project that is estimating sardine populations off the coast of north america. In a nutshell me and about 4 other guys are going to be staring at pictures of water until the wee hours in the morning all month with the hopes that in the end we can identify a rough estimation of sardine populations. Now me and all the other guys are not exactly what you would call photoshop pros, but between the 5 of us we know that adjusting the light levels, saturation, hue, and a few other things we can see the schools of fish pop out in all the photos. This is a lengthy process and if done for each picture we would take all year to finish when we only have a month. I was wondering if anyone on here had any experience doing this sort of thing or would be able to advise me on how to do this quick and/or make the schools pop up extremely clearly.

Original photo (shot by a plane at 8000ft)

Post lightroom editing, and touch ups in photoshop we get

Ive resized the after picture to make it smaller but you get the drift. The dark spots are the schools of fish and what we are after in the photo. At best we get a few that stand out in extreme contrast to the water but most of the time it takes 20minutes of fiddling around with settings to get barely darker smudges to come out for us.