Disclosed is a ship identity recognition method based on the fusion of AIS data and video data, comprising: collecting a ship sample to train a ship target classifier; performing, using the ship target classifier, ship target detection on a video frame collected by a gimbal camera; performing a comparison with a recognized ship library to filter a recognized ship; acquiring AIS data and filtering same across time and spatial scales; predicting the current position of an AIS target using a linear extrapolation method and converting the current position to an image coordinate system; performing position matching between a target to be matched and the converted AIS target; and performing feature extraction on the successfully matched target and storing the extracted feature, together with ship identity information, into the recognized ship library. Experimental results show that the present invention can quickly and accurately extract a surveillance video and perform identity recognition on the ship target, effectively reduces labor costs, and has a broad application prospect in the fields such as ship transportation and port management.