Which is why I always try to steer my players towards "Blue Planet" and "OCEAN".
I do tend to keep sea elves, merfolk, and locathah as the "core" races for my game, but by no means do I limit it to that. I have a few inspirations that I tend to reference often. I also tend to change races around a bit. My locathah, for example, are a hermaphroditic race (happens with fish quite often) born into a caste system based on their coloration (they are colored like larger angelfish .I also think that merfolk, aquatic elves, sahaguin, and the other D&D aquatic monsters are terrible player races. They're bland caricatures, and nobody knows where to start when playing them.
Sweetsponge soaked with inkwine is the libation of choice, in the local waters.a half-Tolkienesque universe where dwarves drink beer....