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.
Sheepshead
A deep-bodied coastal fish easily recognized by bold black vertical bars and prominent human-like teeth, common around docks, jetties, and oyster reefs along the western Atlantic.
saltwaterGulper Eel
A bizarre deep-sea eel with a massively oversized, hinged jaw and a whip-like tail far longer than its body, adapted to swallow prey larger than itself in the food-scarce abyss.
deepsea
Discus
A round, flattened Amazonian cichlid prized for its vivid patterns and colors, considered one of the most striking freshwater aquarium fish and a demanding species to keep well.
freshwater
Yellowtail
A streamlined, silvery jack with a distinctive yellow stripe running along its flanks and a yellow tail, found in temperate coastal waters worldwide.
pelagic
Wolf Cichlid
One of the largest Central American cichlids, this powerful predator combines vivid turquoise and orange coloration with formidable jaws.
freshwater
X-ray Tetra
A translucent coastal South American characin whose see-through body and bold black-white-yellow fin markings make it instantly recognizable.
brackish
Wolf Herring
A slender, silvery predator with a fanged, upturned jaw, the wolf herring hunts small fish in Indo-Pacific coastal waters despite belonging to the herring order.
saltwater
Yellowfin Grouper
The yellowfin grouper is a reddish-brown to olive reef grouper of the Caribbean and western Atlantic, easily recognized by the bright yellow patch on its pectoral fins.
reef
Whale Shark
The largest fish in the world, a gentle filter-feeding shark covered in a distinctive checkerboard pattern of pale spots and stripes, found in warm seas worldwide.
cartilaginousViolet Goby
An eel-like burrowing goby with an iridescent violet-grey sheen and a large upturned mouth, found in muddy estuaries of the tropical Americas.
brackish
Tompot Blenny
A large, bold blenny with elaborate branched eye tentacles, common on rocky reefs and harbor walls around the British Isles and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Tidepool Sculpin
A tiny, well-camouflaged sculpin that spends its life in rocky intertidal tidepools along the Pacific coast, able to survive being stranded above water at low tide.
saltwater
Sixline Soapfish
A dark brown-black Indo-Pacific reef fish marked with six pale horizontal stripes, known for secreting a bitter, toxic skin mucus as a defense mechanism.
reefSnailfish
A tadpole-shaped, scaleless fish family found from shallow tide pools to the deepest ocean trenches; hadal-zone species hold the record for the deepest fish ever observed.
deepseaSpaghetti Eel
An extremely thin, worm-like burrowing eel that spends most of its life buried in sandy or muddy estuarine bottoms across the Indo-Pacific, rarely seen in the open.
brackish
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.
saltwaterSeamoth
A small, armor-plated bottom-dweller with wing-like pectoral fins, the Seamoth crawls across sandy Indo-Pacific seafloors using its fins almost like legs.
saltwater
Sarpa Salpa
The sarpa salpa, or salema porgy, is a silvery sparid with golden stripes that grazes on algae over Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic reefs and seagrass beds.
reef
Sawfish
A critically endangered ray with a long, tooth-lined snout resembling a saw, used to detect and strike schooling fish in shallow tropical waters.
cartilaginous
Reef Stonefish
The reef stonefish is the classic, rock-mimicking stonefish of coral reef flats, considered one of the most venomous fish in the sea and virtually invisible against reef rubble.
reef
Queen Parrotfish
A blue-green Caribbean parrotfish with a bold yellow band across the snout, commonly seen grazing algae along reef slopes and flats throughout the region.
reef
Pacific Lamprey
The Pacific lamprey is a jawless, anadromous fish with a toothed sucking disc mouth, found along Pacific coastlines from Baja California to Japan and Alaska.
saltwater
Olive Flounder
A large, muscular East Asian coastal flatfish with olive-brown mottled skin, a big toothy mouth, and eyes on its left side, also known as Japanese flounder.
saltwater
Oarfish
An extraordinarily long, silver, ribbon-shaped deep-sea fish with a red crest and trailing fin rays, rarely seen alive at the surface and among the longest bony fish known.
deepsea