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).
Shark fin trading in Costa Rica
Since the late 1980s populations of northwest Atlantic coastal and oceanic shark have dropped by an average of 70%, and in 2003 the World Conservation Union (IUCN) estimated that tens of millions of sharks are finned and discarded at sea every year. However, estimates are muddy given the fact that the sharks and their fins cross-cut different fishing markets (not to mention that the vast majority of sharks are exploited in the Pacific coast of Costa Rica as opposed to the Atlantic coast). The major environmental problem facing Costa Rican waters by mass shark finning is that the fishermen involved in the practice of killing sharks for their fins pay no attention to the age, gender, size, or even the species of shark. Young shark may be killed off, drastically affecting the ability to breed. A further biological complication is that sharks are naturally slow to breed and mature, which makes the possibility of extinction for many shark species in Costa Rican waters becoming increasingly ominous.