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.
Ocean Sunfish
The ocean sunfish is the heaviest bony fish alive, a flattened giant with no true tail that drifts through temperate and tropical seas feeding on jellyfish.
pelagic
Mola Mola
The heaviest bony fish in the world, an enormous, flattened, disc-shaped giant that appears to be missing a tail, often seen basking sideways at the ocean's surface.
pelagic
Redear Sunfish
A deep-bodied sunfish named for the bright red-orange margin on its black ear flap, notable for its specialized diet of snails and other mollusks in warm southern lakes and ponds.
freshwater
Green Sunfish
A hardy, aggressive small sunfish with a large mouth and dark greenish-blue body marked with yellow-green flecking, tolerant of poor water conditions where few other sunfish can survive.
freshwater
Ocean Pout
An eel-like bottom-dweller of the northwestern Atlantic, the Ocean Pout produces natural antifreeze proteins that let it stay active in near-freezing winter waters.
saltwater
Oceanic Whitetip Shark
A robust open-ocean shark identified by its large, rounded, white-mottled fins, once one of the most abundant pelagic sharks but now heavily depleted across tropical open oceans worldwide.
pelagic
Giant Oceanic Manta Ray
The largest ray in the world, a black-and-white filter feeder with enormous triangular pectoral fins and distinctive cephalic lobes used to funnel plankton into its mouth.
cartilaginous
Pumpkinseed
A small, brilliantly colored sunfish with an orange-spotted body, blue-green facial streaks, and a distinctive red spot on the black ear flap, common in weedy ponds and lakes of eastern North America.
freshwater
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
Rock Bass
A robust, bronze-colored sunfish relative with striking red eyes, often found around rocky cover in clear streams and lakes of eastern and central North America.
freshwater
Skipjack Tuna
A small, fast-swimming tuna with bold dark stripes along its lower body, forming enormous schools across warm oceans and supporting the world's largest tuna fishery.
pelagic
Manta Ray
The largest ray in the world, a gentle filter-feeding giant with a diamond-shaped body, forward-facing cephalic fins, and unique underside spot patterns used to identify individuals.
cartilaginous
Atlantic Wolffish
A large, eel-like cold-water fish with powerful crushing jaws, sheltering solitarily in rocky dens across the North Atlantic.
saltwater
Warmouth
A stocky, big-mouthed sunfish with red eyes and dark cheek streaks, at home in weedy, sluggish waters and swamps of the eastern United States.
freshwater
Blue Shark
A slender, wide-ranging oceanic shark with a striking indigo-blue back, long pointed pectoral fins, and large eyes, found throughout temperate and tropical open oceans worldwide.
cartilaginous
Salmon
A large anadromous fish that hatches in freshwater rivers, migrates to the ocean to mature, and returns upriver to spawn, prized as an iconic sport fish.
freshwater
Pilotfish
A boldly barred open-ocean jack famous for closely trailing sharks and other large marine animals for shelter and feeding opportunities.
pelagic
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
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
Blue Marlin
A massive, cobalt-blue billfish with a long spear-like bill, the Blue Marlin is one of the fastest and largest predators of the open tropical ocean.
pelagic
Albacore
A sleek open-ocean tuna easily recognized by its exceptionally long pectoral fins, ranging widely across temperate seas worldwide.
pelagic
Indo-Pacific Sailfish
The Indo-Pacific sailfish is a large, streamlined billfish famed for its towering, sail-like dorsal fin and status as one of the fastest fish in the ocean.
pelagic
Bluefin Tuna
One of the largest and fastest bony fish in the ocean, the Bluefin Tuna is a warm-blooded, torpedo-shaped predator capable of long transoceanic migrations across the Atlantic.
pelagic
Tuna
A fast, powerfully built open-ocean fish capable of high-speed sustained swimming, ranging across warm and temperate seas worldwide in large migratory schools.
pelagic