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.
Yellowfin Croaker
A silvery drum common in Pacific surf zones, recognized by faint diagonal lines along its flanks and yellow-tinted fins.
saltwater
Tiger Shovelnose Catfish
A large South American river catfish with a distinctive flattened, shovel-shaped snout and bold black stripes across a pale body.
freshwater
Silver Perch
The Silver Perch is a small, bright silvery sciaenid common in seagrass and oyster reef habitats along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
brackish
Star Drum
One of the smallest drums in the western Atlantic, an elongated silvery fish often found in dense schools over soft coastal bottoms.
saltwater
Spanish Hogfish
A colorful western-Atlantic wrasse with a purple-blue upper front and yellow rear, and a well-known juvenile cleaning habit.
reef
Reef Shark
A common, streamlined shark patrolling Indo-Pacific coral reefs, recognized by its broad black-edged tail fin and stout gray body.
reef
Peacock Blenny
A shallow-water Mediterranean blenny in which breeding males grow a tall fleshy head crest and a bold eyespot on the dorsal fin.
saltwater
Margined Flyingfish
A large flyingfish with dark, blue-margined wing-like pectoral fins that glides across open tropical and subtropical seas.
pelagic
Flame Tetra
A Rio de Janeiro coastal stream characin with a graduated flame-like color pattern from silver at the head to red-orange at the tail.
freshwater
Florida Gar
A heavily spotted gar endemic to the Florida peninsula, recognized by dark markings covering its head, body, and every fin.
freshwater
Devil Ray
A large, winged filter-feeding ray that cruises the open ocean in graceful undulating flight, often seen leaping clear of the water.
pelagic
Common Pleco
A large, heavily armored South American catfish with a suckermouth used to graze algae and biofilm from rocks and submerged wood.
freshwater
Chinook Salmon
The largest of the Pacific salmon species, prized for its size, known for long river migrations that can exceed a thousand miles.
freshwater
Bleeding Heart Tetra
A deep-bodied upper Amazon characin marked by a small red 'bleeding heart' spot and, in males, a dramatic elongated dorsal fin.
freshwater
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
Yellowfin Surgeonfish
One of the largest surgeonfishes, reaching 70 cm, identified by a bright yellow pectoral-fin patch and blue-ringed eyes; found in lagoons and bays across the Indo-Pacific and eastern Pacific.
reef
Vermilion Snapper
A slender, vivid pinkish-red snapper of deep offshore reefs and hard bottom, feeding mainly on plankton picked from the water column rather than the substrate.
reef
Powder Blue Tang
A vivid powder-blue surgeonfish with a black facial mask and white throat patch, common on shallow reef edges across the Indian Ocean.
reef
Marbled Lungfish
The largest of the African lungfish, marked with a dark mottled pattern, capable of surviving prolonged drought buried in a mucus-lined mud burrow.
freshwater
Haddock
A slender, silvery-grey relative of the cod, easily recognized by a distinctive black lateral line and a dark thumbprint-like blotch above the pectoral fin.
saltwater
Walking Catfish
A hardy Southeast Asian catfish capable of breathing air and moving across land between bodies of water using its pectoral spines.
freshwaterWhite Croaker
The White Croaker is a pale, silvery-brassy sciaenid common in shallow Pacific coastal waters from British Columbia to Baja California.
saltwaterTwo-spot Red Snapper
The two-spot red snapper, or bohar snapper, is a large, deep red Indo-Pacific reef predator, sometimes showing two pale saddle spots on the back, and an important predator on coral reef slopes.
reef
Two-spot Goby
A small sand-dwelling goby known for the two large false eyespots on its raised dorsal fin, which mimic a crab's eyes to startle predators.
reef