Along with the rapid advance in global industrialization, oil spill events caused by offshore operations, trans-portation and accidents are increasing. Compared with ship surveys, monitoring oil spills through remote sensing has real-time, comprehensive, low-cost advantages, which can effectively guide cleaning and evalu-ation, and reduce the marine ecological destruction resulting from oil spills. Therefore, studying the remote sensing mechanism used to monitor marine oil spills is of great significance for ecological environmen-tal protection. This paper describes an experiment and corresponding analysis based on the above-water method, using the East China Sea coastal turbid water. The analysis shows that“upward short-wave”in ultraviolet and blue-purple bands and its displacement, along with the changing thickness, are important characteristics for distinguishing between the oil slick and the sea water, and also to differentiate oil slicks of different thicknesses. From blue to near-infrared bands, the spectrum of lube oil is flatter than that of diesel, and the diesel spectrum rises faster than the lube spectrum on the right side of the trough at 400 nm. These two features form an important basis for differentiating diesel from lube oil. These analyses will further the development of oil spill remote sensing in the East China Sea.