Fish Identifier

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.

all freshwater saltwater reef pelagic cartilaginous deepsea brackish

Witch Flounder

A slender, tongue-shaped deep-water North Atlantic flatfish with plain grayish-brown coloration, fine scales, and a preference for cold muddy shelf and slope bottoms.

Whipnose Anglerfish

A deep-sea anglerfish with an extraordinarily long, whip-like fishing rod, often exceeding its own body length, tipped with a luminous lure trailed out in the darkness to draw in curious prey.

Stoplight Loosejaw

Stoplight Loosejaw

A deep-sea dragonfish with a hinge-less lower jaw and a rare ability to emit and see red bioluminescent light, invisible to most other deep-sea animals, effectively a private searchlight.

Tripod Fish

An abyssal fish that props itself above the seafloor on three elongated fin rays, forming a tripod, and waits motionless facing into the current to ambush tiny drifting prey.

Warsaw Grouper

A massive, deep-dwelling western Atlantic grouper with a dark brownish-red body, oversized head, and a second dorsal spine noticeably longer than the others.

Telescopefish

A slender deep-sea fish named for its forward-directed, tubular telescoping eyes, which provide sharp binocular vision to detect faint prey silhouettes in near-total darkness.

Viperfish

The viperfish is a deep-sea predator famous for its oversized, needle-like fangs and a light-tipped dorsal fin ray used as a lure in the dark mesopelagic zone.

Snowy Grouper

A dark gray-brown deepwater grouper of the western Atlantic; juveniles are boldly marked with white spots that fade to a plainer, darker pattern in large adults.

Sixgill Shark

A massive, ancient-lineage deep-sea shark with six gill slits instead of the usual five, found from shallow fjords to depths beyond 2,000 m.

Bristlemouth

A tiny, worldwide deep-sea fish of the genus Cyclothone believed to be the most numerous vertebrate on Earth by sheer population size.

Slickhead

A dark, soft-bodied deep-sea fish named for its smooth, scaleless head, drifting slowly along cold continental slopes far beyond the reach of sunlight.

Snailfish

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.

Sloane's Viperfish

A slender deep-sea predator armed with needle-like fangs so long they cannot close inside its mouth, along with a light-tipped dorsal spine used to lure prey close.

Sea Hagfish

The sea hagfish is a primitive, eel-shaped jawless fish that scavenges on the deep, cold seafloor of the North Atlantic and produces enormous amounts of defensive slime.

Speckled Hind

A reddish-brown to blackish western Atlantic grouper densely covered in small pale blue-white spots, giving rise to its nickname the "strawberry grouper."

Spotted Wolffish

Spotted Wolffish

A large, deep-water wolffish covered in bold dark spots, found in cold Arctic and North Atlantic waters on rocky and gravel seafloor.

Sabertooth Fish

Sabertooth Fish

A slender deep-sea predator with oversized fang-like teeth and unusual tubular, upward-angled eyes that help it spot the silhouettes of prey against faint downwelling light.

Rex Sole

A slender, deep-dwelling northeastern Pacific flatfish notable for unusually long pectoral fins and plain light brown coloration on cold continental shelf and slope bottoms.

Megamouth Shark

Megamouth Shark

An enormous, gentle filter-feeding shark with a massive rounded mouth, discovered only in 1976 and still one of the rarest sharks on record.

Pacific Hagfish

Pacific Hagfish

The Pacific hagfish is a jawless, eel-shaped deep-sea scavenger of the eastern Pacific known for releasing thick defensive slime and for feeding on carcasses on the ocean floor.

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.

Pacific Blackdragon

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.

Northern Wolffish

Northern Wolffish

The largest wolffish species, the Northern Wolffish is a plain grey-brown, deep-water predator of the North Atlantic and Arctic with powerful crushing jaws.

Pelican Eel

A deep-sea fish named for its enormous pelican-like pouch of a mouth, which it can expand to engulf prey and water, then slowly expel excess water while retaining any captured prey.

Greenland Shark

Greenland Shark

A massive, slow-moving Arctic shark believed to be the longest-lived vertebrate on Earth, with lifespans possibly exceeding 250 years.

Longspine Snapper

Longspine Snapper

The longspine snapper is a slender, bright red deepwater snapper known for an elongated filament trailing from its dorsal fin, found on steep offshore slopes across the Indo-Pacific.

Lanternfish

Lanternfish are small, extremely abundant mesopelagic fish found worldwide, recognized by rows of light-producing photophores along their silvery bodies and large low-light eyes.

Grenadier

Grenadiers, or rattails, are deep-sea fish found on ocean slopes worldwide, unmistakable for their oversized head tapering into a long, thin, whip-like tail with no true tail fin.

Greenland Halibut

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.

Gulper 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.

Hatchetfish

Hatchetfish are small, silvery deep-sea fish named for their laterally compressed, blade-like body and large upward-pointing tubular eyes adapted to detect faint light above.

Gulf Hagfish

The Gulf hagfish is a small, jawless scavenger found in deep offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico, living on soft sediment far below the sunlit zone.

Frilled Shark

An eel-like, primitive deep-sea shark often called a living fossil, with six frilly gill slits and rows of needle-like teeth for catching soft-bodied prey.

Goblin Shark

A rare, pink-skinned deep-sea shark with a long, blade-like snout and jaws that shoot forward to snatch prey in an instant.

Football Fish

A round, warty deep-sea anglerfish whose much larger females dangle a bioluminescent lure from a spine above the mouth to draw prey through the permanent darkness of the deep ocean.

Fangtooth

The fangtooth is a small, deep-sea fish with the largest teeth relative to body size of any fish, identified by its oversized fangs, armored head, and compact dark body.

European Ling

A very large, elongated, eel-shaped cod relative found on deep rocky and muddy grounds along the continental shelf edge of the northeastern Atlantic.

Deep-sea Hatchetfish

Deep-sea Hatchetfish

A small, silvery, laterally flattened deep-sea fish shaped like a hatchet blade, using rows of downward-pointing light organs to mask its silhouette from predators lurking below.

Deep-sea Lizardfish

Deep-sea Lizardfish

A hardy abyssal ambush predator that rests motionless on the deep seafloor, using a large tooth-lined mouth to seize whatever prey passes close by.

Dragonfish

Dragonfish are elongated, predatory deep-sea fish with needle-sharp teeth and a long luminous chin barbel used to lure prey in the permanently dark mesopelagic zone.

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.

Dover Sole

The Dover sole is a slippery-skinned, right-eyed flatfish of the North Pacific, unusual among soles for living on deep continental slope bottoms far offshore.

Coelacanth

The coelacanth is an ancient, deep-dwelling lobe-finned fish once known only from fossils, famously rediscovered alive off South Africa in 1938.

Cusk Eel

An elongated, eel-shaped deep-sea fish whose family holds the record for the deepest fish ever documented, recovered from a trench nearly 8,400 meters down.

Cookiecutter Shark

Cookiecutter Shark

A small, cigar-shaped deep-sea shark known for gouging round cookie-shaped plugs of flesh from much larger animals, including whales and other sharks.

Coffinfish

A rotund, soft-skinned anglerfish relative that shuffles along the deep seafloor on stubby, arm-like fins and dangles a tiny lure to attract prey close to its wide mouth.

Bigfin Squid Fish

Despite the common name, this is not a true fish but a rarely filmed deep-sea cephalopod, famous for extraordinarily long elbowed arms trailing beneath a small gelatinous body.

Black 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.