It has many difficulties in monitoring and detection accurately and optimal control in aquaculture because the targets are so special and environment is so sophisticated that contributes too many impact factors. Big data technology, as well as mathematical models are used to process and analyze the large scale of data producing in aquaculture industry and the useful results are presented to producers and decision makers in intuitive form, which is the fundamental way to solve the above problems. The research progress and development trend of the applications of big data technology in aquaculture were deeply discussed. Firstly, the overall architecture of applying big data technology in aquaculture was proposed and the data sources and data acquisition tools were listed. Then, several kinds of analysis techniques, which had been well applied to deal with the existing problems in aquaculture, were mainly summarized and the several current big data platforms and the services they provided for aquaculture were introduced. Finally, in view of solving the difficulties and challenges faced in the process of applying big data technologies in aquaculture, the research future in this field was proposed form the aspects of comprehensive awareness, intelligent analysis, automatic decision-making, and big data standard system construction of aquaculture. In the applications of big data technology in aquaculture, data is the basis and analysis is the core. The ultimate goal is to take advantage of big data technology to improve the comprehensive productivity and efficiency of aquaculture. In order to achieve it, the actual demands in aquaculture should be greatly concerned. In addition, data of the whole industry chain in aquaculture should be integrated and the basic theories and core key technologies should be studied intensively and thoroughly. In this way, the application of big data technology in aquaculture will be deeper and the integration of the two will be closer, which will support the complete transformation and upgrading of China aquaculture industry.