In UWAC (underwater acoustic communication), UWA (underwater acoustic) channels change rapidly due to varying environment conditions. AMC (adaptive modulation and coding) is an efficient technique to improve system efficiency by changing transmission parameters according to channel conditions in UWA channels. In this paper, we propose an environmental cognition orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) UWAC system and compare it with AMC algorithm with six transmission modes together with three threshold detection algorithms. Simulation and experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed system. The system will play an important role in future communication networks which can significantly improve the efficiency of the system.