Arctic underwater acoustics is a science, which focuses on the study of ocean environment effect of Arctic and the neighbor's area, including ocean environment noise, particularly the ocean ambient noise under ice cover, reverberation characteristics of Arctic, the underwater signal propagation law and underwater acoustic communication in Arctic. The research topics also include the new feature's study in signal processing, due to the special Arctic environment, i.e. so called half underwater sound channel effect. The history of research work of Arctic underwater acoustics can be traced back to the end of World War II, the scientific and technical interests obviously with cold war brand. Recently, since the trend of global warming of the earth, the ice cover area in Arctic substantially decreases, and the Arctic freight channel will hopefully open. The plenty resources in high latitude area attracts more and more attention of ocean power country in the world. The Arctic underwater acoustics becomes a new hot topic in research work and has been covered many new issues. The brief introduction of Arctic underwater acoustics is reviewed in this paper. The acoustic oceanography and ocean acoustics topics in this area are presented. Since 1990's of last century, the Chinese scientists have expressed their interests in Arctic exploration and study. The results of 5 times Arctic surveys organized by Chinese oceanic organizations are introduced, the research program of ongoing 6th survey is briefly expressed. It provides preliminary measures for the challenges of our country in Arctic and neighbor area study.