According to the monitoring results of the surface sediment samples from five cruises of 150 survey stations from 2006 to 2014 collected in the adjacent sea water of the Yellow River estuary, the pollution status and the annual variations of the seven kinds of heavy metals Hg, Cu, Pb, Cd, Cr, Zn and As in the sediments were analyzed. The methods of single factor standard index and potential ecological risk index were used to evaluate the status of heavy metal pollution and potential ecological risk degree. The results showed that the contents of heavy metals met the first class standard requiement of the Marine Sediment Quality except a few stations investigated in 2011 exceeded the first class standard. The contents of Hg and Cd were equal, which were obviously lower than that of the other five heavy metal elements. And the annual variations of the seven heavy metals were different from each other. The average single factor standard indices of the seven heavy metals were all less than 1, which indicated that the quality status of the surface sediment in the survey area was good. The order of the annual average single factor standard indices of the seven heavy metals was Cu>Cr>As>Pb> Cd>Hg>Zn. And the standard index value of Cu was higher than the others, even the average standard index of Cu reached 0.61 in recent ten years, which should be paid attention to and strengthened routine monitoring. And the single factor standard indices for the other six heavy metal elements were all less than 0.4. Further potential ecological risk assessment results showed that the average potential ecological risk factors of seven heavy metals of all cruises were less than 40, which presented a low level ecological risk. And the order of for seven heavy metals in recent ten years was Hg>Cd>As>Pb>Cu>Cr>Zn, where Hg was the main potential ecological risk factor in the survey area. The annual variations of the comprehensive potential ecological risk index RI ranged from 32.18 to 53.12, which indicated a low level of ecological risk. Basically, the trend of the annual variations of RI was increasing first, then decreasing, and then a slight increasing.