The authors of this paper embarked on a research to find an effective mechanism or algorithm to determine the optimal data packet size for efficient underwater acoustic (UWA) data transmission. In the course of the research the authors have identified some of the UWA channel parameters that play an important role in determining the suitable data packet size for efficient data transfer. These include the distance between a source and a sink, bit error rate, type of protocol, energy per useful bit, and the throughput. In this paper the authors present the findings on the relationship between data packet size, the throughput, the bit error rate (BER), and the distance between a source-sink pair by keeping the type of protocol and the energy per useful bit parameters constant. These findings represent the preliminary contribution in parts to the final induction of the algorithm for data packet size optimization. The results obtained are based on simulation using the MIRACLE (Multi-InteRfAce Cross-Layer Extension library) package running on standard ns2 network simulator. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.