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.
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
Queen Parrotfish
A blue-green Caribbean parrotfish with a bold yellow band across the snout, commonly seen grazing algae along reef slopes and flats throughout the region.
reef
Pearl Danio
A slender, iridescent danio with a shifting pearly sheen of blue, pink, and gold along its flanks, native to fast-flowing Southeast Asian streams.
freshwater
Pacific Lamprey
The Pacific lamprey is a jawless, anadromous fish with a toothed sucking disc mouth, found along Pacific coastlines from Baja California to Japan and Alaska.
saltwater
Mediterranean Flyingfish
The most common flyingfish of the Mediterranean Sea, with long, mottled pectoral fins and a slender body built for gliding above coastal pelagic waters.
pelagic
Panther Grouper
An unmistakable Indo-Pacific grouper with a pale gray body covered in round black spots, a small head, and a distinctive humped, sloping forehead profile.
reef
Midas Cichlid
A large, variably colored Central American cichlid, ranging from mottled gray to solid gold-orange, known for its bold and often combative nature.
freshwater
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.
deepsea
Olive Flounder
A large, muscular East Asian coastal flatfish with olive-brown mottled skin, a big toothy mouth, and eyes on its left side, also known as Japanese flounder.
saltwater
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
Jardini Arowana
A large, metallic-scaled arowana from northern Australia and New Guinea, known for its bronze-green body and upward-facing mouth built for surface feeding.
freshwater
Mexican Tetra
A resilient silvery tetra native to Texas and Mexico, renowned for cave populations that lost their eyes and pigment through evolution in total darkness.
freshwater
Lined Surgeonfish
A boldly striped blue, black, and yellow tang that fiercely defends algal-turf patches on shallow, wave-exposed reef crests across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Longtail Tuna
A coastal tuna of the Indo-West Pacific with a notably slender, elongated body and a long, low second dorsal fin, often found closer to shore than other tunas.
pelagic
Leopard Shark
A slender, boldly patterned houndshark common in shallow California bays, easily recognized by its dark saddle-like blotches and spots.
cartilaginous
Grey Gurnard
A bottom-dwelling gurnard with an armored, pale-spotted grey-brown back and large bluish pectoral fins, common across sandy shelf waters of Europe.
saltwaterHerring
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
Gulf Flounder
A left-eyed flatfish common along the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern Atlantic coast, marked by three distinctive eyespots arranged in a triangle.
saltwater
Horse-eye Jack
A deep-bodied, silvery jack with an oversized eye, commonly seen in large stationary schools around Caribbean and Florida reefs and harbors.
reef
Jacksmelt
A larger, long-bodied silverside found along the California and Baja coasts, often schooling in bays and nearshore waters alongside the smaller Topsmelt.
saltwater
King Mackerel
A large, streamlined mackerel of the warm western Atlantic, prized as a fast offshore game fish and recognizable by its silvery, unmarked body.
pelagic
Great White Shark
A massive, torpedo-shaped predator found in cool coastal and offshore waters worldwide, easily recognized by its sharp countershading and crescent-shaped tail.
cartilaginous
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
Green Sturgeon
The green sturgeon is the most marine-adapted North American sturgeon, ranging widely along the Pacific coast and entering rivers only occasionally to spawn.
saltwater