This species is known from only a few specimens but probably it is circumtropical and wide ranging. Known records are from the following areas:

Western Atlantic: Brazil.
Eastern Atlantic: Senegal.
South-eastern Indian Ocean: Western Australia.
Northwest Pacific: Japan, Philippines, Indonesia.
Central Pacific: Hawaiian Islands (Oahu).
Eastern Pacific: USA (southern California).

A coastal and oceanic, epipelagic and neritic species, it has been found in water as shallow as 5m in a bay and 40 m deep on the continental shelf. It has also been recorded offshore in the epipelagic zone at 8?165 m depth in water 348?4,600 m deep and some have been washed ashore (Yano et al. 1997).