Variable channel conditions in underwater channels have great effects on total energy consumption. This variability in channel conditions is ignored in many networking protocols. In this paper we have investigated the effects of variable channel conditions in calculating the optimum per hop distance (i.e. optimum number of relays between sender and receiver) in bounded distance routing protocols. Based on this investigation we have applied adaptive variable error correction technique to minimize the effect of variable channel conditions in calculating the optimum number of relays between sender and receiver. The result shows less deviations from the optimum number of relays when we use variable error correction technique. © 2013 IEEE.