Caribbean Sea
Marine biota in the region have representatives of both the Indian and Pacific oceans which were caught in the Caribbean before the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama four million years ago. In the Caribbean Sea there are around 1,000 documented species of fish, including sharks (bull shark, tiger shark, silky shark and Caribbean reef shark), flying fish, giant oceanic manta ray, angel fish, spotfin butterflyfish, parrotfish, Atlantic Goliath grouper, tarpon and moray eels. Throughout the Caribbean there is industrial catching of lobster and sardines (off the coast of Yucatán Peninsula).
Finetooth shark
In North American waters, the finetooth shark is common and found from North Carolina to the northern Gulf of Mexico, and very occasionally straying as far north as New York. In Central and South American waters, it is rare, but may occur more widely than presently known, having been reported off Trinidad and Guyana, infrequently from the Caribbean Sea, and off southern Brazil from São Paulo to Santa Catarina. The northwestern Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and South America populations are distinct, with little interchange between them. Old records exist of this species in the eastern Atlantic off Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, but these likely represent misidentifications of spinner sharks ("C. brevipinna").