  The scientific and technological revolution of the Internet of Things has
begun in the area of oceanography. Historically, humans have observed the ocean
from an external viewpoint in order to study it. In recent years, however,
changes have occurred in the ocean, and laboratories have been built on the
seafloor. Approximately 70.8% of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans and
rivers. The Ocean of Things is expected to be important for disaster
prevention, ocean-resource exploration, and underwater environmental
monitoring. Unlike traditional wireless sensor networks, the Ocean Network has
its own unique features, such as low reliability and narrow bandwidth. These
features will be great challenges for the Ocean Network. Furthermore, the
integration of the Ocean Network with artificial intelligence has become a
topic of increasing interest for oceanology researchers. The Cognitive Ocean
Network (CONet) will become the mainstream of future ocean science and
engineering developments. In this article, we define the CONet. The
contributions of the paper are as follows: (1) a CONet architecture is proposed
and described in detail; (2) important and useful demonstration applications of
the CONet are proposed; and (3) future trends in CONet research are presented.
