The invention relates to a method for measuring underwater propagation delay, aiming at overcoming low reliability and high measurement errors of traditional methods for measuring the propagation delay of voice signals in a non-responsive manner. According to the invention, the method combines the advantages of wideband hyperbolic frequency modulation, namely anti-Doppler effects, high time resolution and excellent anti-noise properties of direct spread spectrum modulation of m sequence, can effectively counter the influence of channel Doppler effects and noise, and acquire reliable measuring properties with a low processing complexity. According to the invention, the method has high measuring precision, strong anti-underwater acoustic channel capability, low processing complexity and excellent reliability. Due to aforementioned reasons, according to the invention, the method can be applied to the field of underwater acoustic navigation, positioning and underwater acoustic communication.