Abstract: The high-resolution multi-band data of WorldView-2 has a great potential in monitoring islands and underwater reefs using remote sensing technology. The precision of atmospheric correction is an important and necessary procedure for quantitative application of such data. This study illustrates an effective atmospheric correction method of WorldView-2 images for marine applications, which is based on the traditional dark-object subtraction technique. Atmospheric correction was performed by selecting and extracting the deep clear water and dense vegetation of islands, respectively, as dark target pixels. Using the Xisha Islands and reefs as a study area, the WorldView-2 eight-band imagery was applied to calculate aerosol parameters, and the actual surface reflectance was obtained. In order to verify the results, we compared the retrieved reflectance with the original reflectance and field measurement data. The comparison shows that the computed reflectance was close to the situ measurement data in terms of both spectral shape and reflectance value??.