  The vast volume of marine wireless sampling data and its continuously
explosive growth herald the coming of the era of marine wireless big data. Two
challenges imposed by these data are how to fast, reliably, and sustainably
deliver them in extremely hostile marine environments and how to apply them
after collection. In this article, we first propose an architecture of
heterogeneous marine networks that flexibly exploits the existing underwater
wireless techniques as a potential solution for fast data transmission. We then
investigate the possibilities of and develop the schemes for energy-efficient
and reliable undersea transmission without or slightly with data rate
reduction. After discussing the data transmission, we summarize the possible
applications of the collected big data and particularly focus on the problems
of applying these data in sea-surface object detection and marine object
recognition. Open issues and challenges that need to be further explored
regarding transmission and detection/recognition are also discussed in the
article.
