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.
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
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
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
Kelp Bass
The kelp bass is a mottled olive-brown temperate reef fish closely tied to kelp forests along the eastern Pacific coast, often seen hovering near kelp fronds and rocky structure.
saltwater
Chalk Bass
A tiny bicolored sea bass with a lavender-blue head and orange rear body, often seen darting over Caribbean rubble reefs.
reef
White Bass
A deep-bodied, silvery schooling bass with faint horizontal stripes, common in large freshwater lakes and rivers of the central United States, known for its spring spawning runs.
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
Smallmouth Bass
A bronze-green freshwater bass native to eastern North America, prized as a popular sport fish and recognized by its vertical dark bars and reddish eyes. It favors clear, rocky rivers, streams, and lakes.
freshwater
Peacock Bass
A powerful, brilliantly colored cichlid from South America, prized for its golden-green flanks, dark vertical bars, and the distinctive eyespot at the base of its tail.
freshwater
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
Striped Catfish
An eel-shaped Indo-Pacific reef catfish marked with pale longitudinal stripes, whose juveniles form dense, tightly packed schooling balls over sand and reef flats.
reef
Striped Marlin
A swift, streamlined billfish famous for its tall, sail-like blue dorsal fin and rows of pale vertical stripes, ranging widely through the Pacific and Indian Oceans as a top offshore predator.
pelagic
Striped Panchax
A larger South Asian killifish, also called the golden wonder killifish, marked by bold dark horizontal stripes on a golden-olive body. It hunts insects near the surface of ponds and rice paddies.
freshwater
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 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
Striped Sea Robin
A bottom-dwelling northwestern Atlantic fish with an armored head and wing-like pectoral fins, the Striped Sea Robin shows bold dark diagonal bars along its brownish body.
saltwater
Red Drum
The Red Drum is a coppery-bronze coastal fish of the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, best known for the dark eyespot near its tail.
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.
brackishZebra Danio
A small, torpedo-shaped freshwater fish famous for the bold horizontal blue and gold stripes running the length of its body, and widely used as a model species in scientific research.
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
Potato Grouper
The potato grouper is one of the largest reef groupers, a pale grey fish covered in dark blotches resembling potato skin, found on Indo-Pacific reefs and known for its curious, approachable behavior toward divers.
reef
Grass Rockfish
A stocky, olive-green rockfish adapted to very shallow rocky habitats and tide pools, among the most tolerant rockfish species of low-oxygen, wave-exposed environments.
saltwater
Stars and Stripes Puffer
A widespread Indo-Pacific puffer, also called the whitespotted puffer, marked with fine white spots on an olive-brown body and dark rings encircling the eyes and pectoral fin bases.
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