Marine actinomycetes provide a flourishing source of structurally unique and bioactive secondary metabolites that account for 75% of our antibiotics. Almost all of these products have come from land-based organisms and now attention is turning towards marine-derived species as a source of new structures and bioactivity. Reports to date indicate this group of bacteria are adaptable to a variety of environmental conditions, and can be isolated from multiple marine habitats with immense species diversity. Numerous genera of marine actinomycetes have been isolated from marine sediments and some strains have been isolated from several sponge species. Even so, the discovery of actinomycetes in Caribbean sponges remains underexplored. In this study, ten different species of Caribbean sponges and sediments were collected from four different locations in the coastal waters off Puerto Rico to examine diversity and bioactive compound production of marine actinomycetes in Caribbean sponges. A total of 180 actinomycetes, were isolated and identified based on 16S rRNA gene analysis.