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.
Seahorse
An unmistakable upright-swimming fish with a horse-like head and curled prehensile tail, notable for males carrying and giving birth to offspring.
reef
Salmon Shark
A powerful, warm-bodied mackerel shark closely related to the Porbeagle, built for speed in the cold North Pacific and named for its preference for salmon.
pelagic
Rockfish
Rockfish is a broad name for the roughly 100-plus Sebastes species of the North Pacific, spiny-finned, long-lived fish closely tied to rocky reefs and kelp forests.
saltwater
Redlip Halfbeak
A slender coastal halfbeak with a needle-thin lower jaw tipped in vivid red, gliding in small schools over shallow tropical Indo-Pacific waters.
saltwater
Porcupinefish
A spine-covered, inflatable reef fish found in warm seas worldwide; nocturnal and slow-moving, it shelters in reef crevices by day and forages for hard-shelled prey at night.
reef
Pouting
Also called bib, the Pouting is a deep-bodied, coppery-bronze gadoid common around rocky reefs and wrecks of the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Pacific Saury
A slender, silvery, beaked schooling fish of the temperate North Pacific, closely related to needlefish, marked by a row of small finlets near its tail.
pelagic
Ohrid Trout
The Ohrid Trout is a salmonid endemic to Lake Ohrid on the border of North Macedonia and Albania, found nowhere else on Earth and now critically endangered in the wild.
freshwater
Lake Wanam Rainbowfish
A deep-bodied rainbowfish endemic to the small crater Lake Wanam in Papua New Guinea, with males showing rich orange-red body coloration.
freshwaterHerring
One of the world's most abundant fish, the herring forms colossal schools in cold North Atlantic waters and underpins much of the region's marine food web.
pelagic
Glass Knifefish
A slender, near-transparent South American fish that swims using a continuous rippling fin and emits a weak electric field to sense its surroundings.
freshwater
Dog Snapper
A robust, coppery-red Western Atlantic snapper named for its prominent canine teeth, identified by a pale triangular patch beneath the eye.
reef
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.
deepsea
Emerald Rainbowfish
A deep-bodied rainbowfish endemic to Lake Wanam in Papua New Guinea, with mature males displaying a brilliant iridescent emerald-green sheen.
freshwater
Cusk
The cusk is a solitary, eel-like member of the cod family found on deep rocky bottoms of the North Atlantic, recognized by its single long dorsal fin and thick lips.
saltwater
Burbot
The burbot is the only fully freshwater member of the cod family, an eel-shaped, mottled predator found in cold lakes and rivers across the Northern Hemisphere.
freshwater
California Grunion
A slender coastal fish famous for coming fully ashore on sandy California beaches during nighttime spawning runs timed to spring high tides.
saltwater
Bigeye Tuna
A large, deep-diving tuna named for its notably large eyes, adapted for hunting in the dim light of deep water far below the ocean surface.
pelagic
Spiny Dogfish
A slender, small schooling shark with sharp spines in front of each dorsal fin and no anal fin, one of the most abundant sharks worldwide.
cartilaginous
Blue-spotted Shark
A small, slender nocturnal reef shark covered in vivid blue spots and dark saddle bands, popular in home aquariums.
reef
Alligator Gar
A massive, armor-scaled freshwater fish with a broad alligator-like snout lined with two rows of sharp teeth, among the largest freshwater fish in North America.
freshwater
Atlantic Wolffish
A large, eel-like cold-water fish with powerful crushing jaws, sheltering solitarily in rocky dens across the North Atlantic.
saltwater
American Flagfish
A stocky, deep-bodied killifish native to Florida, named for the red-and-blue striped, star-marked flank pattern of breeding males reminiscent of a flag.
freshwater
Atlantic Cod
A large, heavy-bodied bottom fish with a distinctive chin barbel and three dorsal fins, the Atlantic Cod is one of the North Atlantic's most historically significant and heavily studied fish species.
saltwater