Caribbean

The Caribbean and Caribbean Sea derives its name from the original inhabitants of the region, the 'Carib people', who were the inhabitants at the time of the first Spanish explorers. Located in the northern tropics, the islands of the Caribbean form a wide arc between Florida in the north and Venezuela in the south, the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, being part of a submerged chain of volcanic mountains.

Caribbean Sea , tropical sea, c.970,000 sq mi (2,512,950 sq km), arm of the Atlantic Ocean, Central America. It is bordered on the N and E by the West Indies archipelago, on the S by South America, and on the W by the Central American isthmus. The Caribbean is linked to the Gulf of Mexico by the Yucatán Channel; to the Atlantic by many straits, of which the Windward Channel and Mona Passage are the most important; and to the Pacific Ocean by the Panama Canal. The Magdalena is the largest river entering the sea; Lake Maracaibo is its largest embayment.