Modern airborne and satellite remote sensing techniques offer attractive opportunities to coastal monitoring systems. Improvements of the evaluation of larger scales phenomena and processes due to the synopticity of the remote sensing data are of particular interest. However, some uncertainties and limitations about remote sensing must be considered. Microwave, infrared and visible radiation methods and their applications are briefly discussed and some applications are demonstrated. Special attention is paid to the remote sensing of various pollutants in the sea, in particular with respect to oil pollution.Promising developments of the remote sensing methods for coastal monitoring are to be expected from the European remote sensing satellite missions ERS 1 and ERS 2.Combination of these observations with simultaneous in situ measurements from ships (sea truth) appears to be most advantageous for the interpretation of the collected data.