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.
Blackbarred Halfbeak
A silvery halfbeak marked with faint dark vertical bars, common over seagrass beds and reef flats across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Brook Silverside
A slender, nearly translucent freshwater fish of eastern North American lakes and rivers, known for its needle-like beak and habit of skipping across the water's surface.
freshwater
Black Drum
The Black Drum is a deep-bodied, greyish-black sciaenid with distinctive chin barbels, found in estuaries and coastal waters from the mid-Atlantic to Argentina.
brackish
Bluegill
A common North American sunfish recognized by its deep, rounded body and the dark blotch on its gill cover, widely found in lakes and ponds and popular with anglers.
freshwater
Blacktip Reef Shark
A slender, small reef shark instantly recognized by the bold black tips on all its fins, commonly seen patrolling shallow lagoons and reef flats across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
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
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
Blue Whiting
Blue whiting is a slender, silvery-blue deep-water relative of cod that forms enormous schools across the northeastern Atlantic, distinguished by its large eyes and lack of a chin barbel.
pelagic
Blue Devil Damselfish
A small, intensely electric-blue damselfish common on shallow Indo-Pacific reef flats, with males developing an orange-tinted tail during breeding season.
reef
Blue Ring Angelfish
An Indo-Pacific angelfish named for the vivid blue ring behind its head, with adults displaying a yellow-brown body crossed by curving electric-blue lines.
reef
Blackwing Flyingfish
A stocky, wide-ranging flyingfish named for its large dusky-black pectoral wings, found gliding above open ocean surface waters across much of the world's warm and temperate seas.
pelagic
Black Sea Bass
A stocky, dark-bodied grouper relative common on rocky reefs and wrecks along the temperate western Atlantic coast, easily recognized by its high arched back and blunt head.
reef
Blackfin Tuna
The smallest member of the true tuna genus, this fast schooling fish sports a dark blue-black back and yellow, black-edged finlets, ranging through warm western Atlantic waters.
pelagic
Blonde Naso Tang
A striking unicornfish with a gray body, black-and-yellow facial markings, and a bright yellow blaze along the back, best known in the aquarium trade as the Indian Ocean's 'blonde' color form.
reef
Boeseman's Rainbowfish
Boeseman's Rainbowfish is a vividly two-toned freshwater fish from New Guinea, with a blue-violet front half and a fiery orange-yellow rear half.
freshwater
Blue Catfish
North America's largest catfish species, silvery-blue to slate gray with a deeply forked tail, native to the Mississippi basin and now established as an invasive predator in several Atlantic drainages.
freshwater
Boxfish
A rigid, box-shaped Indo-Pacific reef fish encased in fused bony plates; juveniles are bright yellow with black spots, dulling to olive-grey tones as adults.
reef
Blue Rockfish
A schooling rockfish with dark blue-gray coloring, commonly seen in large numbers around kelp forests and rocky reefs along the Pacific coast of North America.
saltwater
Blue Parrotfish
An entirely blue Caribbean parrotfish, with large adult males developing a bulging forehead snout.
reef
Bogue
The bogue is a slender, silvery schooling sparid common throughout the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, feeding on plankton, algae, and small invertebrates in open coastal water.
saltwater
Blue Tang
A vivid royal-blue reef fish with a black palette-shaped marking and a bright yellow tail, popularized worldwide after appearing in animated film.
reef
Blue Damselfish
A small, brilliant electric-blue damselfish that fiercely defends its patch of shallow Indo-Pacific reef.
reef
Blue Acara
A hardy, adaptable South American cichlid with iridescent blue-green spangling, popular in aquariums for its calm temperament and manageable adult size.
freshwater
Blue Gourami (Three Spot Gourami)
A hardy, adaptable Southeast Asian labyrinth fish named for the two dark spots along its flank that, combined with the eye, form a "three spot" pattern; the wild form is blue-grey with darker mottling.
freshwater
Bluehead Wrasse
A small, abundant Caribbean reef fish famous for changing color and sex as it matures, with terminal males developing a striking blue head and green body. It is one of the most numerous fish on western Atlantic reefs.
reef
Bluestriped Grunt
A vividly striped Caribbean reef fish with a bright yellow body crossed by narrow electric-blue lines, often seen in dense daytime schools beneath reef ledges.
reef
Bluespotted Rabbitfish
A vividly colored rabbitfish with a yellow-orange body scattered with small electric-blue spots, commonly seen grazing coral-rich reef flats across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Blue Runner
A slender, greenish-blue jack common along the western Atlantic coast, often called the hardtail and known for its schooling habits and role as forage for larger predators.
pelagicBigfin Squid Fish
Despite the common name, this is not a true fish but a rarely filmed deep-sea cephalopod, famous for extraordinarily long elbowed arms trailing beneath a small gelatinous body.
deepsea
Blind Cave Tetra
A ghostly pink, eyeless cavefish descended from surface-dwelling Mexican tetras, adapted over millennia to life in total darkness within Mexican limestone caves.
freshwater
Black Molly
A solid-black, selectively bred color strain of the common molly, the black molly is one of the most recognizable and widely kept aquarium livebearers.
freshwater
Blobfish
A gelatinous deep-sea sculpin whose flesh is slightly less dense than water, letting it hover just above the seafloor without expending much energy swimming.
deepsea
Black Neon Tetra
A small Brazilian tetra marked by a bold black horizontal stripe paired with a shimmering silvery-white line above it, a popular schooling fish in freshwater aquariums.
freshwater
Bonito
A fast, streamlined relative of the tunas and mackerels, marked by bold dark diagonal stripes across its upper back, found in schools across temperate and warm seas.
pelagic
Black Swallower
A small deep-sea fish renowned for an extraordinarily distensible stomach that lets it engulf prey several times its own body length and mass in a single strike.
deepsea
Bluefin Trevally
A vividly colored reef jack covered in electric-blue spots, with matching blue fins, patrolling coral reefs across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Black Jack
The Black Jack is a large, uniformly dark trevally that forms big schools around offshore tropical reefs and current-swept drop-offs across the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans.
reef
Black Sea Bream
A deep-bodied porgy of the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic, notable for males that excavate and guard nest depressions on the seabed during spawning.
saltwater
Bicolor Blenny
A small reef blenny sharply split into a dark front half and bright orange rear half, sheltering in rubble crevices.
reef
Black Rockfish
A dark, deep-bodied schooling rockfish common over rocky reefs and kelp forests along the Pacific coast, often seen in large surface-oriented aggregations.
saltwater
Banded Rainbowfish
A highly variable, boldly patterned rainbowfish from northeastern Australia, often showing multiple dark horizontal stripes and vivid regional color forms.
freshwater
Atlantic Sturgeon
The Atlantic sturgeon is a large, armored anadromous fish of eastern North America, spending years at sea before returning to coastal rivers to spawn.
brackish
Bay Pipefish
The bay pipefish is a long, slender pipefish common in eelgrass beds and estuaries along the Pacific coast of North America, closely matching the green-brown color and shape of the eelgrass blades it hides among.
brackish
Bigeye Trevally
A large, silvery-to-black reef jack famous for forming massive, swirling daytime schools around Indo-Pacific reef passes and drop-offs.
reef
Banded Gourami
A hardy South Asian labyrinth fish known for its diagonal orange-blue stripes and ability to gulp air in oxygen-poor water.
freshwater
Blackstripe Topminnow
A slender freshwater killifish of the central and eastern U.S., identified by a single solid black stripe running from snout to tail. It inhabits quiet pools and slow stream reaches.
freshwater
Barred Halfbeak
A schooling, seagrass-associated halfbeak of the Indo-Pacific with a long, red-tipped lower jaw and faint dark bars along its silvery flanks.
saltwater
Black Ghost Knifefish
A uniformly black, blade-shaped freshwater fish that swims using a long undulating ventral fin and navigates using a weak electric field generated along its body.
freshwater