I'd strongly suggest you to explore Landsat 8 imagery, particularly due to the new Band 1 Coastal Blue., which is highly sensitive to sediment load and chlorophyll. They've being successfully used used in monitoring lake water quality.
Landsat 8 does have a new lower blue spectral band that is considered an improvement for clear water penetration (and atmospheric related analyses) and should also be helpful with detecting and mapping information related to suspended sediments. However, Landsat 4 and 5 have also been used widely in the last couple of decades to help detect and map suspended sediment information in shallow coastal areas, as well as lakes and rivers. I was involved in a project related to detecting and monitoring suspended sediment information within the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with a very high temporal resolution. We mounted a spectral radiometer with Landsat TM bands 1, 2, 3, and 4 (blue, green, red, and NIR) and collected readings every 15 minutes. As you would expect the importance of the individual and combined spectral bands changed as the sediment load changed. The NIR band becomes very important with moderate to very high sediment loads, while the visible bands more so with lower loads. Of course, you have to worry about sun glint, wave action, etc. We also used multi-temporal Landsat TM images to detect and map the spatial distribution of suspended sediment within the San Francisco Bay. Look at the links below for some information related to some of this work.