Ocean exploration activities require the support of maritime information networks. The acoustic-radio cooperative network(ARCNet) is a heterogeneous network composed of surface/air/space radio links and underwater acoustic links that aims to build an integrated network of air, space and sea, providing efficient internet access and data forwarding services for underwater equipment. Routing protocols play a crucial role in ARCNet. This article analyzes the transmission characteristics of the classic vector-based forwarding (VBF) protocol in ARCNet. VBF is originally proposed for underwater acoustic sensor networks(UASN), but this article will show that VBF is an appropriate routing protocol for ARCNet. Based on the ns-3 simulation platform, we implement the ARCNet and the VBF protocol. Simulation results are presented to evaluate its performance under various network parameters.