The cooperation of multiple pieces of equipment can greatly improve the efficiency of work when performing tasks underwater. Networking communication is a crucial technology for underwater cooperation. Wireless optical communication technology has many advantages in underwater networking communication. Neighbor discovery is a key part of networking between nodes, and it is required to establish links quickly. This paper combines the token mechanism with the random backoff mechanism and proposes a multi-tokens random backoff (MTRB) neighbor discovery method for underwater wireless optical communication. Simulation and analysis of the MTRB method show that the method has high neighbor discovery efficiency. When the parameters are selected properly, the rate of neighbor discovery by the MTRB method is increased by about 50% compared with the single token and the random backoff algorithm.