A marine riser transporting fluid in the Bohai Sea was selected as study object, using an experimental and numerical method to study its vortex induced vibration in waves. A similarity theory was used in the experiment to derive the experimental model from a practical model, the dynamic response of a riser model was measured in waves. A corresponding numerical simulation was performed using a finite element method. Comparisons were made with the results between the experiment and the numerical simulation. Some valuable results were obtained.