An underwater image enhancement algorithm was proposed based on generative adversarial networks (GAN) and improved convolutional neural networks (CNN) in order to solve the problems of haze blurring and color distortion of underwater image. Generative adversarial network was used to synthesize underwater images to effectively expand the paired underwater data set. The underwater image was decomposed by multi-scale wavelet transform without losing the feature resolution. Then, combined with CNN, the compact learning method was used to extract features from multi-scale images, and skip connection was used to prevent gradient dispersion. Finally, the fog blur effect of the underwater image was resolved. In order to improve the color correction ability of the model and overcome the problem of color distortion of underwater images, the correlation between different channels of color images was learned by using the style cost function. Experimental results show that, in subjective visual and objective indicators, the proposed algorithm is superior to the contrast algorithm in comprehensive performance and robustness.