To address problems of a high loss of optical beam energy, weak optical beam quality, and weak communication performance in underwater wireless optical communication, an experimental system is setup to carry out comparative experiments of the transmission for Airy beam and ordinary Gaussian beam in water channel, as well as comparative experiments of the single-photon detection communication in an 80-meter water channel. Experimental results show that the abilities of the Airy beam to maintain beam quality and to resist beam dithering in water channel are evidently superior to those of the Gaussian beam. Compared to the Gaussian beam, the adoption of the Airy beam in communication can increase the effective frame ratio by ~11.15% and reduce the error rate by ~42.52%. Results prove the superior performance of the Airy beam to the Gaussian beam in underwater optical communication, thus providing a possibility for long distance and high performance underwater optical communication.