The invention discloses a method for detecting complex sea-surface remote sensing image ships based on Gist characteristic study, comprising the following steps: step 1, collecting the remote sensing image data of complex sea-surfaces which have different time phases, different sensors and different sizes; step 2, implementing the block preprocess for the complex sea-surface remote sensing image to obtain a sample image section and a detection image section; step 3, drawing the distinguishing features and the Gist features of the sample image section and the detection image section; step 4, training the sample image section according to the distinguishing features and the Gist features obtained in the step 3 to obtain a training mode; step 5, adopting an SVM (Support Vector Machine) classifier to judge whether the detection image section has ships according to the training mode obtained in the step 4; and step 6, finding the single ship of the detection image section based on an improved itti visual attention mode. The method for detecting the complex sea-surface remote sensing image ships based on Gist characteristic study ensures that the ships do not fail to examine, reduces the false alarm rate, effectively treats the complex sea-surface remote sensing images under the disturbed conditions of sea clutters, cloud and mist, and has low computation complexity and strong pertinence.