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.
Cubbyu
A small, deep-bodied drum with a tall dorsal fin and faint dark stripes, often seen hovering near reef ledges in the western Atlantic.
reef
Dusky Shark
A large, robust requiem shark found along continental coastlines worldwide, notable for its slow growth and long-distance migrations.
saltwater
Bluefin Killifish
A small, slender killifish native to Florida and the southeastern US, named for the iridescent blue fringe on the male's dorsal and anal fins.
freshwater
Bonefish
A silvery, torpedo-shaped fish of shallow tropical flats, nicknamed the 'grey ghost' for its uncanny ability to vanish against sandy bottoms.
saltwater
Blacktip Shark
A fast, energetic coastal shark named for the black tips on most of its fins, often seen leaping and spinning while chasing schooling fish.
saltwater
American Brook Lamprey
The American brook lamprey is a small, non-parasitic freshwater lamprey found in clean streams across eastern North America, closely related to the Arctic lamprey but never feeding once it reaches adulthood.
freshwater
Japanese Eel
The Japanese Eel is an East Asian catadromous fish that migrates from freshwater rivers to offshore Pacific spawning grounds, and is now classified as Endangered.
freshwater
Merry Widow
A small, peaceful Central American livebearer with a translucent grayish body and a distinctive dark spot near the gill cover, popular among hobbyists for decades.
freshwater
Grass Carp
A large, torpedo-shaped herbivorous carp native to East Asia, widely introduced worldwide to control aquatic vegetation due to its voracious appetite for water plants.
freshwater
Bridled Burrfish
A small Caribbean burrfish with fixed, non-erectile spines and a pale body marked with fine dark reticulations and scattered blotches, often resting motionless among seagrass.
reef
Whiting
The whiting is a slender, silvery member of the cod family found across northeastern Atlantic shelf seas, easily recognized by the small black blotch at the base of its pectoral fin.
saltwaterMiller Lake Lamprey
The Miller Lake lamprey is a tiny, non-parasitic jawless fish historically restricted to a single lake and its tributary streams in Oregon, one of the smallest lamprey species known.
freshwaterTiger Muskie
A hybrid of northern pike and muskellunge, this elongated apex predator sports bold dark tiger stripes and is prized as one of freshwater's most aggressive game fish.
freshwater
Telescopefish
A slender deep-sea fish named for its forward-directed, tubular telescoping eyes, which provide sharp binocular vision to detect faint prey silhouettes in near-total darkness.
deepsea
Striped Sea Robin
A bottom-dwelling northwestern Atlantic fish with an armored head and wing-like pectoral fins, the Striped Sea Robin shows bold dark diagonal bars along its brownish body.
saltwater
Southern Platyfish
The full common name for the widely kept platy, the southern platyfish is a small, hardy livebearer native to Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, prized for its color variety and easy breeding.
freshwater
Spotted Bass
A compact black bass species with rows of small dark spots below the lateral line, native to the Mississippi and Gulf drainages and often found alongside Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass.
freshwater
Rock Cod
Rock cod is a common name for numerous Sebastes rockfish species found on rocky Pacific reefs, identified by their deep, spiny-finned body and mottled camouflage coloration.
saltwater
Redear Sunfish
A deep-bodied sunfish named for the bright red-orange margin on its black ear flap, notable for its specialized diet of snails and other mollusks in warm southern lakes and ponds.
freshwater
Rock Wrasse
A common temperate wrasse of California and Baja kelp forests, recognized by its elongated olive-green body, salmon-pink belly, and a dark saddle-like blotch near the tail.
saltwater
Red Bream
The red bream, or blackspot seabream, is a pink-tinged sparid with a dark shoulder spot that lives over rocky and sandy bottoms in the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Peacock Gudgeon
A vividly colored, peaceful gudgeon from Papua New Guinea, prized in aquariums for its blue-spangled body, orange fins, and calm temperament rare among small predatory fish.
freshwater
Oceanic Whitetip Shark
A robust open-ocean shark identified by its large, rounded, white-mottled fins, once one of the most abundant pelagic sharks but now heavily depleted across tropical open oceans worldwide.
pelagic
Largetooth Sawfish
One of the largest sawfish species, uniquely able to travel far up freshwater rivers, now Critically Endangered and eliminated from most of its former circumtropical range.
cartilaginous