Fish Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ fish species — freshwater, saltwater, reef, and pelagic — with habitat, size, diet, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Klein's Butterflyfish
A golden-brown Indo-Pacific butterflyfish with a dark eye bar and dusky patches, common on many reefs.
reef
Longnose Gar
A slender, torpedo-shaped freshwater fish with an extremely long, narrow, tooth-lined snout, easily recognized among North American fish by its needle-like jaws.
freshwater
Fangtooth
The fangtooth is a small, deep-sea fish with the largest teeth relative to body size of any fish, identified by its oversized fangs, armored head, and compact dark body.
deepseaCusk Eel
An elongated, eel-shaped deep-sea fish whose family holds the record for the deepest fish ever documented, recovered from a trench nearly 8,400 meters down.
deepsea
Unicornfish
A large gray-brown surgeonfish named for the forward-pointing bony horn projecting from its forehead, an important herbivore grazing tough brown algae on Indo-Pacific reef flats.
reef
Longfin African Conger
A slender, sand-dwelling conger with a distinctly long dorsal fin and a two-tone body, found burrowing along reef flats and lagoons across the Indo-Pacific and East African coast.
reef
Green Moray Eel
The Green Moray Eel is a large Atlantic reef eel whose apparent green color actually comes from a yellow mucus layer coating its naturally blue-grey skin.
reef
Dwarf Lionfish
A compact, mottled lionfish with broad fan-like fins and venomous spines, ambushing prey on Indo-Pacific reefs.
reefSnailfish
A tadpole-shaped, scaleless fish family found from shallow tide pools to the deepest ocean trenches; hadal-zone species hold the record for the deepest fish ever observed.
deepsea
Peruvian Anchoveta
A small, slender schooling fish found in colossal numbers within the nutrient-rich Humboldt Current off Peru and Chile, considered one of the most abundant fish species on Earth.
pelagic
Largemouth Bass
A robust, olive-green freshwater fish with a distinctive dark lateral stripe and a very large mouth, one of North America's most popular sport fish now established worldwide.
freshwater
Nassau Grouper
A stocky Caribbean reef grouper known for its ability to rapidly change color and pattern, from pale to dark barred phases, and for forming large seasonal spawning aggregations now heavily protected.
reef
Sea Lamprey
The sea lamprey is a primitive, jawless, eel-like fish famous for its parasitic sucker-disc mouth ringed with sharp teeth, which it uses to latch onto and feed on other fish.
saltwater
Honey Gourami
A small, peaceful South Asian labyrinth fish whose breeding males flush a warm honey-gold to orange color with a dark throat and belly, making it a popular gentle community fish.
freshwater
Atlantic Cod
A large, heavy-bodied bottom fish with a distinctive chin barbel and three dorsal fins, the Atlantic Cod is one of the North Atlantic's most historically significant and heavily studied fish species.
saltwater
Sturgeon
An ancient family of large, armored bony fish with bony scutes instead of scales and a shark-like barbeled snout. Sturgeon migrate between rivers and the sea to spawn and are among the most endangered fish groups.
brackish
Pacific Herring
A slender, silvery schooling fish closely related to the Atlantic Herring, found in cold coastal waters across the North Pacific, where it forms a critical forage base for fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.
pelagic
Senegal Bichir
An elongated, primitive-looking freshwater fish with a row of small spiny finlets along its back and paired lung-like breathing organs, retaining features from ancient ray-finned fish ancestors.
freshwater
Tompot Blenny
A large, bold blenny with elaborate branched eye tentacles, common on rocky reefs and harbor walls around the British Isles and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Horse-eye Jack
A deep-bodied, silvery jack with an oversized eye, commonly seen in large stationary schools around Caribbean and Florida reefs and harbors.
reefPygmy Goby
One of the smallest vertebrates on Earth, this minute translucent goby perches in crevices on Indo-Pacific coral reefs and has an extraordinarily short lifespan.
reef
Sergeant Major
A common silvery damselfish marked with five bold black vertical bars, resembling military rank stripes, found on shallow tropical reefs.
reef
Sarpa Salpa
The sarpa salpa, or salema porgy, is a silvery sparid with golden stripes that grazes on algae over Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic reefs and seagrass beds.
reef
Pouting
Also called bib, the Pouting is a deep-bodied, coppery-bronze gadoid common around rocky reefs and wrecks of the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater