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).
Cookiecutter shark
Virtually every type of medium- to large-sized oceanic animal sharing the habitat of the cookiecutter shark is open to attack; bite scars have been found on cetaceans (including porpoises, dolphins, beaked whales, sperm whales and baleen whales), pinnipeds (including fur seals, leopard seals and elephant seals), dugongs, sharks (including blue sharks, goblin sharks, basking sharks, great white sharks, megamouth sharks and smalltooth sand tiger sharks), stingrays (including deepwater stingrays, pelagic stingrays and sixgill stingrays), and bony fishes (including billfishes, tunas, dolphinfishes, jacks, escolars, opahs, and pomfrets). The cookiecutter shark also regularly hunts and eats entire squid with a mantle length of , comparable in size to the shark itself, as well as bristlemouths, copepods, and other prey of more modest dimensions.
Parasitic attacks by the cookiecutter shark leave a round "crater wound", averaging across and deep. The prevalence of these attacks can be high; off Hawaii, nearly every adult spinner dolphin bears scars from this species. Diseased or otherwise weakened animals appear to be more susceptible; in the western Atlantic, there are records of emaciated beached melon-headed whales with dozens to hundreds of recent and healing cookiecutter shark wounds, while such wounds are rare on nonemaciated beached whales. The impact of parasitism on prey species, in terms of resources diverted from growth or reproduction, is uncertain.