This paper presents some remote sensing techniques and their applications to the understanding of the marine dynamics of the Mediterranean Sea. We emphasize the usefulness of the data provided by meteorological satellites in the visible, near-infrared and infrared ranges. Two techniques are discussed, the first dealing with estimations of wind magnitude at the sea surface, and the second with the prediction of the surface current field. Since the solar light reflected by the surface of the sea depends strongly on the sea state which is driven by the wind, observations of glitter pattern in the near infrared range allow measurements of the wind magnitude. On the other hand, estimations of surface current can be made either when considering patches observed in visible or infrared as passive tracers, or when solving the equation of the heat conservation using a couple of infrared images