The spectral reflectance of oceanic whitecaps in the visible and near infrared was derived from aircraft push-broom radiometer observations over the open ocean near Toulon, France. Inter-band calibration corrections were performed using spectrally white sun glint reflectance. Whitecap reflectance was found to decrease substantially with wavelength in the near infrared, in agreement with other findings in the coastal zone and the open ocean. The study supports previous conclusions regarding the consequences of neglecting the spectral dependence of whitecap reflectance in ocean color algorithms. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union