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.
Scaled Sardine
A small, deep-bodied silvery fish that forms dense inshore schools along the Western Atlantic coast, easily confused with other small herring-like species.
saltwater
Piranha
A deep-bodied South American river fish famed for its sharp interlocking teeth and coordinated group feeding behavior, though most species are opportunistic scavengers.
freshwater
Hake
A slender, silvery predatory fish with a large toothy mouth and two widely separated dorsal fins, Hake patrol continental shelf waters of the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Gulf Menhaden
A deep-bodied, oily-scaled herring relative that forms enormous schools in Gulf of Mexico estuaries, playing a major role as a forage fish in coastal food webs.
brackish
Estuarine Stonefish
A heavily camouflaged, encrusted-looking fish that lies motionless on muddy estuary and mangrove bottoms across the Indo-Pacific, bearing venomous dorsal spines as a natural defense.
brackish
European Anchovy
A slender, small-bodied schooling fish with a distinctive pointed snout and underslung mouth, found in enormous shoals along European and North African coasts and throughout the Mediterranean.
pelagic
Delhezi Bichir
A boldly barred Congo Basin fish with a series of dark vertical bands along its yellow-tan body and a row of spiny finlets along its back.
freshwater
Chub
A robust, thick-shouldered cyprinid of European rivers, the chub is a wary predator-scavenger that lurks under banks and cover, feeding on anything from insects to small fish.
freshwater
Butterfish
A disc-shaped, silvery schooling fish of the northwestern Atlantic shelf, the Butterfish migrates seasonally between inshore and offshore waters and often shelters near jellyfish as a juvenile.
pelagic
Catfish
A vast, worldwide group of scaleless, whisker-faced bottom-dwelling fish; the channel catfish, one of the most familiar North American species, is shown here as representative.
freshwater
Bowfin
A hardy, ancient freshwater fish with a long undulating dorsal fin and the ability to gulp air, often called a living fossil for its unchanged lineage of millions of years.
freshwater
Antarctic Cod
Antarctic cod is a bottom-dwelling notothenioid fish of the Southern Ocean, adapted to near-freezing water and recognized by its mottled brown, camouflaged body and broad head.
saltwater
Watchman Goby
The Watchman Goby is a bright yellow burrow-dwelling fish that forms a cooperative partnership with a pistol shrimp, hovering guard duty at the burrow entrance while the shrimp maintains the tunnel.
reef
Suckermouth Catfish
A heavily armored South American catfish with a disc-shaped sucking mouth used to graze algae from rocks and wood, one of the most familiar aquarium fish worldwide.
freshwaterPouched Lamprey
The pouched lamprey is a jawless, eel-shaped fish named for the fleshy throat pouch that develops in breeding males, migrating from the open ocean into Southern Hemisphere rivers to spawn.
brackish
Pacific Jack Mackerel
A silvery, schooling open-water fish of the eastern Pacific, marked by a full ridge of bony scutes along its sides and an ecologically vital role as forage for larger predators.
pelagic
Lake Sturgeon
The lake sturgeon is a large, armored, long-lived freshwater fish native to the Great Lakes and Mississippi basin, recognizable by its bony scute rows and shovel-shaped snout.
freshwater
Halfbeak
The common name for slender, surface-swimming fish of the family Hemiramphidae, marked by a short upper jaw and a long, needle-like lower jaw; the Common Halfbeak represents the group.
saltwater
Deep-sea Smelt
A small, silvery-bodied deep-sea fish that drifts through the dark midwater zone feeding on tiny plankton, forming a key link in deep ocean food webs.
deepsea
Cardinal Tetra
A tiny, jewel-toned freshwater fish with an iridescent blue stripe running the length of its body above a vivid red stripe below, native to the blackwater tributaries of the Amazon.
freshwater
Yellowtail Rockfish
A slender, olive-brown Pacific rockfish with yellow-tinted fins that schools in large midwater aggregations over rocky reefs and open water along the North American coast.
saltwaterSpotted Moray
A pale, leopard-patterned eel of Caribbean and western Atlantic reefs, its cream body densely covered in dark brown blotches that give it a mottled, sponge-like appearance.
reef
Quillback Rockfish
A mottled brown and orange rockfish with a tall, dark-blotched spiny dorsal fin that gives it a distinctive quill-like silhouette, commonly found around rocky reefs and kelp.
saltwater
Pacific Red Snapper
A bright reddish-pink snapper of rocky reefs along the Eastern Pacific coast from Mexico to Peru, closely resembling its Atlantic namesake but found in a different ocean.
reef