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

Worm Pipefish

A tiny, tailless pipefish that hides among seaweed and rock-pool fronds along European rocky shores, resembling a thin brown worm more than a typical fish.

Yellowtail Flounder

Yellowtail Flounder

A slender northwest Atlantic flatfish recognized by the rusty-yellow tint along its tail edge, reddish-brown upper body, and preference for sandy continental shelf bottoms.

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.

Yellowfin Croaker

Yellowfin Croaker

A silvery drum common in Pacific surf zones, recognized by faint diagonal lines along its flanks and yellow-tinted fins.

Whiting

The whiting is a slender, silvery member of the cod family found across northeastern Atlantic shelf seas, easily recognized by the small black blotch at the base of its pectoral fin.

Winter Flounder

The winter flounder is a small, right-eyed flatfish of the northwest Atlantic, named for its habit of moving into shallow coastal bays during the colder months.

White Seabass

The White Seabass is a large Pacific coast drum with a bluish-bronze back and silvery sides, closely associated with California's kelp forests.

White Croaker

The White Croaker is a pale, silvery-brassy sciaenid common in shallow Pacific coastal waters from British Columbia to Baja California.

White Hake

White hake is a large, elongated cod relative of the western North Atlantic shelf and slope, larger and grayer than red hake, with long pelvic fin filaments.

Wobbegong

A superbly camouflaged, flattened bottom-dwelling shark covered in ornate skin markings and fringed barbels that resemble seaweed or coral rubble.

Turbot

Turbot is a large, diamond-shaped left-eyed flatfish known for its rough, scaleless skin studded with bony tubercles and its camouflaged sandy coloration.

Widow Rockfish

A bronze-brown, large-eyed rockfish that forms dense midwater schools over the outer continental shelf and was once the target of one of the Pacific coast's largest groundfish fisheries.

Tub Gurnard

The largest common European gurnard, with a reddish armored body and enormous, brilliantly blue-green pectoral fins that it spreads when disturbed.

Summer Flounder

Summer Flounder

The summer flounder, also called fluke, is a left-eyed flatfish common along the US Atlantic coast, prized as a popular sport fish and known for its mottled camouflage pattern.

Yellowtail Rockfish

Yellowtail Rockfish

A slender, olive-brown Pacific rockfish with yellow-tinted fins that schools in large midwater aggregations over rocky reefs and open water along the North American coast.

Tompot Blenny

A large, bold blenny with elaborate branched eye tentacles, common on rocky reefs and harbor walls around the British Isles and Mediterranean.

Tidepool Sculpin

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.

Topsmelt

A slender, silvery schooling fish common in bays, estuaries, and kelp beds along the eastern Pacific coast, often seen shoaling near the surface in large numbers.

Windowpane Flounder

Windowpane Flounder

An almost circular, paper-thin Atlantic coast flatfish so translucent that light passes through its body, with light brown mottled coloring and widely spaced eyes.

Wolf Eel

The Wolf Eel is a large, spotted, eel-shaped fish of North Pacific rocky reefs that forms long-term pairs and cooperatively guards its eggs in a shared den.

Totoaba

A critically endangered giant drum endemic to the Gulf of California, notable as one of the largest members of the Sciaenidae family.

Striped Sea Robin

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.

Waspfish

A camouflaged, spiny bottom-dweller with fan-like pectoral fins and a mottled reddish-brown pattern, resting on sand or rubble near reefs across the Indo-Pacific.

Tiger Rockfish

A brightly patterned rockfish with bold dark vertical bars across a pink to reddish body, resembling its namesake big cat and typically found in deeper rocky reef crevices.

Tautog

A large, robust, dark-mottled wrasse tied closely to rocky reefs and wrecks along the western Atlantic coast, known for its powerful shellfish-crushing jaws.

Star Drum

One of the smallest drums in the western Atlantic, an elongated silvery fish often found in dense schools over soft coastal bottoms.

Vermilion Rockfish

Vermilion Rockfish

A vivid orange-red rockfish of Pacific coast reefs, often called 'red snapper' informally by anglers despite being unrelated to true snappers.

Corvina

A large silvery weakfish native to the Gulf of California, best known by its bright orange mouth lining and countershaded body.

Bearded Croaker

A small South American croaker easily recognized by the single sensory barbel on its chin, an unusual trait among drums.

Speckled Flounder

A small, left-eyed flatfish of the tropical eastern Pacific, named for the fine speckled pattern covering its upper body.

Silver Hake

The silver hake is a slim, bright-sided relative of true cod found along the northwestern Atlantic shelf, recognized by its sharp teeth, two dorsal fins, and lack of a chin barbel.

Combtooth Blenny

A general term for the large blenny family Blenniidae, small scaleless fish named for the comb-like row of fine teeth many species use to graze algae.

Naked Sole

A small, scaleless western Atlantic and Gulf sole with smooth skin, fine dark wavy crossbands, and a habit of burying in clean sand on the continental shelf.

Norway Pout

The Norway pout is a small, silvery schooling Gadidae abundant in the North Sea and nearby shelf waters, distinguished by its large eyes and slim body adapted to deeper offshore habitat.

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.

Shanny

The most common rockpool blenny of the northeastern Atlantic, the Shanny is a stout, big-eyed fish that tolerates the harsh, fluctuating conditions of the intertidal zone.

Sea Raven

A warty, spiny-headed sculpin of the northwestern Atlantic shelf, the Sea Raven can inflate its body with air or water as a defense when disturbed.

Rock Cod

Rock cod is a common name for numerous Sebastes rockfish species found on rocky Pacific reefs, identified by their deep, spiny-finned body and mottled camouflage coloration.

Sea Lamprey

The sea lamprey is a primitive, jawless, eel-like fish famous for its parasitic sucker-disc mouth ringed with sharp teeth, which it uses to latch onto and feed on other fish.

Sea Trout

Sea Trout is the migratory, sea-run form of the brown trout, spending its adult life feeding along European coastlines before returning to rivers to spawn.

Sand Sole

A northeastern Pacific flatfish identified by long, thread-like free dorsal fin rays at the front of its head, light brown spotted body, and shallow sandy habitat.

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.

Seamoth

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.

Spotfin Croaker

Spotfin Croaker

A robust surf-zone drum from Southern California and Baja, easily identified by a bold black spot at the base of each pectoral fin.

Sculpin

A broad-headed, bottom-dwelling fish of the family Cottidae, represented here by the widespread Pacific Staghorn Sculpin, known for its large fan-like pectoral fins and mottled camouflage on sandy and muddy bottoms.

Port Jackson Shark

Port Jackson Shark

A distinctive, slow-moving Australian bullhead shark with a blunt pig-like snout, bold harness-shaped markings, and blunt crushing teeth for eating shellfish.

Rock Wrasse

A common temperate wrasse of California and Baja kelp forests, recognized by its elongated olive-green body, salmon-pink belly, and a dark saddle-like blotch near the tail.

Spinner Shark

A slender, high-speed coastal shark famous for leaping and spinning out of the water while lunging through schools of baitfish.