With the development of artificial intelligence,automatic collision avoidance,and unmanned navigation technologies,unmanned vessels are being used more and more widely,especially in the fishery field,which plays an increasingly important role.The key technologies of unmanned vessels are introduced,mainly including environ-ment sensing,path planning,target analysis and formation control technology,and main applications of unmanned vessels in the fishery field are analyzed.Unmanned vessel technology is also challenged by many problems including difficulty in release and recovery,poor environmental adaptability,limited longrange detection and high cost,al-though unmanned vessel technology shows great potential.Finally,the future development trend and research direc-tion of unmanned vessels are discussed.With technological progress,unmanned vessels are expected to become an important tool for fishery resources investigation and management.