Oceans cover approximately three quarters of our planet which statistically means that about only one quarter of the earth in full operation can be connected by the Internet of Things (IoT). The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is one major application of the IoT, and it best described as the network of interconnected smart objects underwater that allows different applications such as environmental monitoring, underwater exploration, and disaster prevention. Reliable wireless communication links underwater and through the air-water interface are required to support the concept of IoUT. The limitations of the acoustic waves and Radio Frequency waves (RF) have motivated the development of optical wireless communication (OWC) with its promise of a high data rate over reasonable ranges. In addition to the harsh ocean environment which influence the transmission of the optical beam underwater, it is very challenging to construct a communication link between underwater platforms and terrestrial platforms or vice versa for data transmission. The air-ocean interface is an extremely complicated communication scenario because it involves a random path between an atmospheric channel and underwater channel or vice versa, and thus has a considerable impact on air-to-sea imaging, laser-line scanning, other remote sensing systems, and optical communication. This dissertation studies the characteristics of the ocean surface waves in different wind conditions, and this require interpreting measurements of ocean surface movements. Additionally, the impact of turbulent water surface is investigated for two scenarios: communication link between underwater platforms and terrestrial platforms, and communication link between underwater platforms. For both scenarios, laboratory experimental results of laser beam refracted by the random air-water interface are presented for analyzing the beam deviation effects. The bit error rate (BER) of a laser communication link is estimated using on-off-keying (OOK) modulation.