Optical data collected in the 17 cruise surveys in the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the Pearl River Estuary are used to establish new retrieval algorithms to evaluate diffuse attenuation coefficient Kd at 490 nm by using the relationship between remote sensing reflectance and Kd. Compared with in situ observation, the retrieval from the empirical algorithm shows that the correlation coefficient is 0.91, the root mean square error is 0.35 and the average relative error is 28.27%. And comparison between retrieval from the semi-analytical method and in situ observation shows that the correlation coefficient, root-mean-square error, average relative error of the results obtained are 0.83, 0.48, 31.53% respectively. Furthermore, both the empirical algorithm and the semi-analytical method can attain better performance than the existing algorithms by comparing retrieval with in situ observation. Although the empirical algorithm shows more precise than the semi-analytical method, the semi-analytical method is more independent to the in situ observation than the empirical algorithm during the process of algorithm establishment. Therefore, the semi-analytical method is more suitable in retrieving Kd in the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the Pearl River Estuary.