Sawfish
Sawfish are primarily found in coastal marine and estuarine brackish waters, but they are euryhaline (can adapt to various salinities) and also found in freshwater. The largetooth sawfish, alternatively called the freshwater sawfish, has the greatest affinity for freshwater. For example, it has been reported as far as up the Amazon River and in Lake Nicaragua, and its young spend the first years of their life in freshwater. In contrast, the smalltooth, green and dwarf sawfish typically avoid pure freshwater, but may occasionally move far up rivers, especially during periods when there is an increased salinity. There are reports of narrow sawfish seen far upriver, but these need confirmation and may involve misidentifications of other species of sawfish.
Sawfish
Historically they ranged in the East Atlantic from Morocco to South Africa, and in the West Atlantic from New York (United States) to Uruguay, including the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. There are old reports (last in the late 1950s or shortly after) from the Mediterranean and these have typically been regarded as vagrants, but a review of records strongly suggests that this sea had a breeding population. In the East Pacific they ranged from Mazatlán (Mexico) to northern Peru. Although the Gulf of California occasionally has been included in their range, the only known Pacific Mexican records of sawfish are from south of its mouth. They were widespread in the western and central Indo-Pacific, ranging from South Africa to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, east and north to Korea and southern Japan, through Southeast Asia to Papua New Guinea and Australia. Today sawfish have disappeared from much of their historical range.