Three-dimensional path planning for underwater vehicles is an important problem that focuses on optimizing the route with consideration of various constraints in a complex underwater environment. In this paper, an improved ant colony optimization (IACO) algorithm based on pheromone exclusion is proposed to solve the underwater vehicle 3D path planning problem. The IACO algorithm can balance the tasks of exploration and development in the ant search path, and enable the ants in the search process to explore initially and develop subsequently. Then, the underwater vehicle can find the safe path by connecting the chosen nodes of the 3D mesh while avoiding the threat area. This new approach can overcome common disadvantages of the basic ant colony algorithm, such as falling into local extremum, poor quality, and low accuracy. Experimental comparative results demonstrate that this proposed IACO method is more effective and feasible in underwater vehicle 3D path planning than the basic ACO model.