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.
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
European Sea Bass
The European sea bass is a sleek, silvery predator common along European and North African coasts, prized by anglers as a hard-fighting sport fish.
saltwater
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
Largemouth Bass
A robust, olive-green freshwater fish with a distinctive dark lateral stripe and a very large mouth, one of North America's most popular sport fish now established worldwide.
freshwater
Spotted Bass
A compact black bass species with rows of small dark spots below the lateral line, native to the Mississippi and Gulf drainages and often found alongside Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass.
freshwater
Chalk Bass
A tiny bicolored sea bass with a lavender-blue head and orange rear body, often seen darting over Caribbean rubble reefs.
reef
Redeye Bass
A small, stream-dwelling black bass named for its bright red eyes, native to rocky, fast-flowing rivers of the southeastern Appalachian foothills.
freshwater
Striped Bass
A large, silvery, hard-fighting bass marked with bold black stripes, native to the Atlantic coast and now widely established in freshwater reservoirs across North America.
brackish
Black Crappie
A silvery panfish mottled with irregular dark speckling, closely related to the White Crappie but preferring clearer water, and one of the most popular schooling panfish in North America.
freshwater
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.
saltwaterBlack Hagfish
The black hagfish is a jawless, deep-sea scavenger found on the muddy continental slope off the Pacific coast of North America, notable for its uniformly dark coloration.
deepsea
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
White Perch
A silvery, deep-bodied temperate bass rather than a true perch, common in brackish estuaries and coastal rivers of eastern North America.
brackish
Redfish
A coppery-bronze estuarine predator famous for the large black eyespot near its tail, the Redfish is a mainstay of shallow coastal flats along the Gulf and southeastern Atlantic coasts.
brackish
Anglerfish
A bizarre deep-sea predator that lures prey with a bioluminescent lure atop its head, adapted to life in total darkness at crushing ocean depths.
deepsea
Pacific Blackdragon
An eel-like deep-sea dragonfish whose females are entirely jet-black with a long chin barbel, while the tiny, non-feeding males look almost nothing like them.
deepsea
Greenland Halibut
A cold-water, deep-sea North Atlantic and Arctic flatfish with a dark body on both sides, a large toothy mouth, and a less flattened posture than typical flounders.
deepsea
Atlantic Salmon
An iconic anadromous fish of the North Atlantic, born in cold rivers, maturing at sea, and returning to natal streams to spawn.
freshwater
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
Lined Seahorse
A medium-sized seahorse of the western Atlantic coast, variably colored from black to bright orange, often marked with fine pale lines on the neck and named for these subtle streaks.
saltwater
Cinnamon Clownfish
A deep reddish-orange clownfish with dark shading across the body and a single white head bar, living among sea anemones on coral reefs of the western Pacific.
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
Spotted Seatrout
A slender estuarine predator of the southeastern United States, recognized by the bold black spots scattered across its silvery back and dorsal fin.
brackish
Yellow Seahorse
A widespread and highly variable Indo-Pacific seahorse, commonly seen in bright yellow though also occurring in black, orange, or mottled brown, found from mangrove estuaries to coral reefs.
reef