In an offshore environment, measurement of surface pollutants on rotating wind turbine blades is necessary to protect the blades from lightning damage. A remote laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technique combined with a photometric device is proposed and demonstrated at the laboratory scale for remote sensing and quantification of surface pollutants such as salt deposits on the wind turbine blade material from different standoff distances. A telescope-based photometric device consisting of a translation stage coupled with an optical fiber is designed for acquiring the optical emissions from the laser-induced plasma at different standoff distances ranging from 1 to 100 m. The experimental studies clearly demonstrate the use of the photometric device in obtaining LIBS spectra for identifying and quantifying the salt deposits by temporal measurements of the optical emissions of a plasma from standoff distances between 1 and 40 m. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.