Abstract:After more than tens years' efforts, the marine electromagnetic exploration has gone to a practical stage. The effects of marine electromagnetic exploration have been widely paid attention by industry day by day. Based on the literature of marine electromagnetic approach and papers published in international conference in recent years, the paper expounded the marine electromagnetic approach in following aspects: basic principle, acquisition, processing and interpretation techniques as well as application cases, which hopes to bring to industry' and researchers' attention and push the marine electromagnetic exploration to be developed at home