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.
Senorita
A slender, golden-brown kelp forest wrasse of the California coast known for its cleaning behavior, picking parasites off larger fish such as sheephead.
saltwater
Harlequin Tuskfish
A vividly colored wrasse with a turquoise-blue body crossed by orange bars and prominent protruding tusk-like teeth used to crush hard-shelled prey. It inhabits coral-rich reef slopes across the western Pacific.
reef
Hogfish
A large western-Atlantic wrasse with a pig-like snout and long front dorsal spines, able to rapidly change color.
reef
California Sheephead
A large sequential-hermaphrodite wrasse of California and Baja kelp forests, with males showing a striking black-and-red pattern and prominent canine teeth used to crush hard-shelled prey.
reef
Bala Shark
A torpedo-shaped, silver freshwater fish named for its shark-like body outline, though it is a true minnow relative, not a shark. Bold black margins on its fins make it a striking, fast-swimming schooler of Southeast Asian rivers.
freshwater
Spanish Hogfish
A colorful western-Atlantic wrasse with a purple-blue upper front and yellow rear, and a well-known juvenile cleaning habit.
reefBluestripe Fangblenny
An elongated blenny with a blue-and-black striped body that mimics cleaner wrasse to approach unsuspecting fish, using enlarged fangs to nip scales, mucus, or tissue before darting away.
reef
Cunner
A small, cold-hardy wrasse with highly variable coloring, found on rocky reefs and kelp beds along the western Atlantic and known for becoming dormant in winter.
saltwater
Tautog
A large, robust, dark-mottled wrasse tied closely to rocky reefs and wrecks along the western Atlantic coast, known for its powerful shellfish-crushing jaws.
saltwater
Ballyhoo
A slender, silvery halfbeak of coastal Atlantic waters, easily recognized by its long lower jaw tipped in red-orange, often seen skittering across the surface in schools.
saltwater
Balloonfish
The balloonfish is a spine-covered porcupinefish that inflates by gulping water when threatened, using its beak-like teeth to crush hard-shelled prey on tropical reefs.
reef
Marble Trout
Marble trout are a large, distinctively patterned native trout of the Balkan Peninsula, named for the marbled, olive-and-brown pattern covering their body, and are now considered vulnerable due to hybridization with introduced brown trout.
freshwater
Long-spined Porcupinefish
The Long-spined Porcupinefish is a spiny, balloon-shaped fish that can inflate its body dramatically, erecting long, permanently attached spines as a defense against predators.
reef
Striped Catfish
An eel-shaped Indo-Pacific reef catfish marked with pale longitudinal stripes, whose juveniles form dense, tightly packed schooling balls over sand and reef flats.
reef
Lumpsucker
A rounded, ball-shaped North Atlantic fish with rough tuberculate skin and a ventral sucker disc used to cling to rocks and kelp.
saltwater
Pufferfish
A slow-swimming reef fish famous for inflating its body into a spiny ball when threatened, using a fused beak-like set of teeth to feed on hard-shelled invertebrates and algae.
reef
Common Lumpsucker
Shaped like a rounded ball with a sucker disc instead of pelvic fins, the Common Lumpsucker drifts through cold North Atlantic waters before moving inshore to spawn on rocky shores.
saltwater