Background In recent years, the global aquaculture industry has developed rapidly. However, traditional manual inspection and monitoring methods have disadvantages such as low efficiency, high cost, and limited coverage, which are difficult to meet the demands of the aquaculture industry in terms of refined resource management, dynamic environmental monitoring, and efficient disaster prevention and control. Against this backdrop, safe, rapid and effective inspection and monitoring methods have become a research hotspot in the aquaculture industry. Earth observation technology, with its high spatiotemporal resolution, wide coverage and multi-dimensional data collection capabilities, has gradually been applied in the aquaculture industry.

Objective This paper aims to systematically review the main application fields of earth observation technology in aquaculture, deeply explore its impact on spatial monitoring and scale assessment of aquaculture zones, water environment monitoring, topography and facility mapping, biomass and health status assessment, and disaster monitoring and risk early-warning,, promoting sustainable development of fishery and ecological environment protection.

Progress  Through comprehensive literature retrieval, this paper systematically sorts out the main application fields of earth observation technology in aquaculture, including spatial monitoring and scale assessment of aquaculture areas, water environment monitoring, topography and facility mapping of aquaculture areas, disaster and risk early warning, etc. The research progress of key technologies such as multi-source data fusion technology and artificial intelligence and automated analysis was summarized. Research has found that earth observation technology has effectively enhanced the accuracy and efficiency of aquaculture management by providing large-scale, high-precision and real-time monitoring data, as well as integrating and intelligently analyzing multi-dimensional information. This has laid a solid foundation for building a rapid and efficient aquaculture model, and further promoted the sustainable development of the fishery and ecological environment protection.

Prospect  In the future, the application of aerial surveying technology in aquaculture should be further strengthened. By continuously optimizing multi-source data fusion algorithms and artificial intelligence analysis models, the adaptability of earth observation technology to complex aquaculture environments can be enhanced, application costs can be reduced, and its popularization among small and medium-sized aquaculture entities can be promoted. Promote the development of aquaculture towards high efficiency, precision and sustainability, and facilitate the digital transformation and green growth of the industry.