Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) are networks of underwater sensors that communicate wirelessly to collect and disseminate data. These networks are typically deployed in aquatic environments, such as oceans, lakes, and rivers, to monitor various physical, chemical, and biological parameters. UWSNs are used for a wide range of applications, such as environmental monitoring, oceanography, underwater exploration, and military surveillance. The sensors in these networks can measure various parameters, such as temperature, pressure, salinity, sound, and light, and transmit the data wirelessly to a central location for analysis and interpretation. UWSNs face several challenges, such as limited bandwidth, long propagation delays, high bit error rates, and high energy consumption, due to the harsh underwater environment. These challenges make it difficult to achieve efficient and reliable data transmission in UWSNs. To address these challenges, various routing protocols, such as Depth-based Routing, Delay Sensitive Routing, and Hydrocast, have been proposed and developed for UWSNs. These protocols aim to provide efficient and reliable data transmission in the challenging underwater environment. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive literature review on existing research in the field of energy efficient underwater communication and routing protocols. We start with the detailed overview of architecture of UWSN and transmission of data and the challenges in underwater wireless communication. Next, we discuss the performance metrics to increase the UWSN’s energy efficiency and the lifetime. Then, we review different routing algorithms suggested by several researchers for underwater wireless communication for energy optimization. We conclude with the detailed discussion of alternative routing algorithms that can overcome the existing limitations and provide efficient, scalable, and robust communication in UWSNs.