We propose an efficient cooperative ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) scheme for underwater acoustic communications, in which cooperative nodes are used to provide more reliable alternative paths for a specific source-to-destination connection. Based on the knowledge of inter-node distances, a cooperative region is defined to include all possible candidates for cooperative nodes from a given pair of source-destination nodes. When the destination node receives an erroneous packet, it asks for retransmission from a cooperative node, which is selected in a closest-one-first manner from the nodes in the cooperative region. The selection procedure continues until the retransmission is successful. In this paper, we evaluate the proposed scheme by comparing it with a conventional S&W ARQ in terms of throughput efficiency. Computer simulation results show that the proposed cooperative retransmission scheme can significantly improve the throughput by increasing the probability of successful retransmission.