Retrievals of inherent optical properties (IOPs) and Chlorophyll-a concentration (Chla) was investigated for AVNIR-2 images with 30-m spatial resolution and four bands in the southwest tropical lagoon of New Caledonia. We corrected the atmospheric and sea-surface reflectance iteratively through the retrieval of IOPs. After an additional correction of sea floor reflectance, the estimated IOPs and Chla agreed well with the in situ measurements even in the lagoon areas. This study provides a method to allowing a local optimal estimation of IOPs and Chla with a high resolution sensor by preparation of the candidate spectra for the target areas.