The suspended matter concentrations are very high in coastal waters of China

and the variations of concentrations gradients are also great.The concentrations may vary from several thousands mg/l to less than 1mg/l.Atmospheric correction for above turbid waters has been always the unsolved problem in ocean color remote sensing.The Arnone iteration method using inherent optical properties of near-infrared（NIR） bands is just applicable in lowly turbid waters

whose spectral relations between red and NIR bands are mostly similar to that derived from ocean color experiment data in Yellow Sea and East China sea

spring

2003.But the iteration method failed

and the water-leaving radiances at shorter bands such as blue bands are negative

when the suspended matter concentrations exceed 10—20mg/l

which is the result of in situ data mentioned above.Therefore

in this article we distinguish turbid waters into low and high turbid waters and give the preliminary criterion.Optimization method has been applied to atmospheric correction of highly turbid waters whose error function is determined by spectral relations between various visible bands from above in situ data.The results show that the optimization method could get reasonable water-leaving radiances

although it needs further fine-tuning.The normalized water-leaving radiances and total suspended matter concentrations derived from SeaWiFS are mostly satisfied when Gordon standard algorithm

Arnone iteration method and optimization are used in atmospheric aorrection.