The yellowtail barracuda is found from the Red Sea east through the Indian and Pacific Oceans to Samoa, its northern limit is the Ryukyu Islands and its southern is on the Great Barrier Reef.[3] It was first recorded in the Mediterranean off Israel in 1992[2] and had reached the island of Rhodes by 2002[4] and Libya by 2005. It is established but still relatively rare in the Mediterranean but its true status may be obscured by confusion with sympatric congeners,[2] although both the yellowtail barracuda and Sphyraena chrysotaenia were found to be common off the coast of Libya.[5]