Coastal aquaculture ponds play a key role in ensuring food supply, providing high-quality protein, and promoting coastal socioeconomic development. However, the rapid expansion of aquaculture ponds poses huge challenges to the stability of regional ecosystems. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the spatial and temporal monitoring and sustainable management of coastal aquaculture ponds, but currently there is a lack of long-term inter-annual spatial distribution data sets of aquaculture ponds. Based on long-term Landsat images from 1986 to 2021, the Google Earth Engine platform and ArcGIS software were used to generate 36 years of spatial distribution data of aquaculture ponds along the coast of Jiangsu Province, and its spatiotemporal change characteristics were explored. The results showed that the overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient of coastal breeding pond identification were both greater than 91% and 81%, and the classification results were accurate. Jiangsu Province coastal aquaculture ponds were growing rapidly, with an increase of 761.75 km2 from 1986 to 2021, and were characterized by slow growth (1986—1996), rapid growth (1997—2001), fluctuating growth (2002—2005), rapid growth (2006—2013), volatility and decline (2014—2021). The spatial distribution was concentrated in Dafeng District, Sheyang County, Xiangshui County and Dongtai City of Yancheng City. Jiangsu Province coastal aquaculture ponds were spatially clustered in estuaries, ports and coastal plains, such as Linhong River Estuary, Guanhe River Estuary, Xinhuai River Estuary, Xinyang Port, Wanzhuang Port and Sichuan Port, and the spatial aggregation was enhanced. The expansion of coastal aquaculture ponds occurred mainly from 1995 to 2015, and the main sources of transfer were other construction lands, high-cover grasslands and tidal flats.