Protecting oceans from illicit oil spills: environment control and remote sensing using spaceborne imaging radars

Oceans are the largest ecosystems of our planet and the most abused ones. Accidental and intentional pollution continue to damage the marine environment to unfathomable scale and consequences. We present the problem of illicit vessel oil discharges on oceans and discuss the technological solutions possible through spaceborne radar imaging. We highlight various milestones and important historical developments in this domain applied to ocean oil spill monitoring and environment control. We introduce different detection techniques and evaluate their performance for detecting illicit oil spills on oceans. Finally, we discuss the current status, highlight some of the open challenges and possible future directions for spaceborne radar imaging of the oceans.