Methods and apparatus for acoustic to optical communications. In one example, a method includes performing active optical measurements of modulation-based surface deformations at a surface of a body of water using an active optical receiver to produce modulation data, the modulation-based surface deformations being representative of a modulation of a modulated acoustic signal originating beneath the surface of the body of water, between instances of performing the active optical measurements of the modulation-based surface deformations, optically measuring surface conditions of the body of water to produce channel information, and based on the modulation data and the channel information, recovering data encoded in the modulation of the modulated acoustic signal.