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).
Tawny nurse shark
The tawny nurse shark is widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific region. In the Indian Ocean, it is found from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa northward to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and India, including Madagascar, Mauritius, the Chagos Archipelago, the Seychelles, and the Maldives. In the western Pacific, it occurs from southern Japan and the coast of China to the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia, to as far south as the northern coast of Australia. In the central Pacific, it has been reported from off New Caledonia, Samoa, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Tahiti. Fossil teeth belonging to this species have been found in the Pirabas Formation of northern Brazil, dating back to the Lower Miocene (23–16 Ma). The presence of these fossils indicates that the range of the tawny nurse shark once extended to the tropical Atlantic Ocean, prior to the formation of the Isthmus of Panama.