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.
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.
deepseaOlive 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.
saltwaterOhrid 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.
freshwaterJardini 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.
freshwaterMexican 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.
freshwaterLined 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.
reefLongtail 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.
pelagicLeopard Shark
A slender, boldly patterned houndshark common in shallow California bays, easily recognized by its dark saddle-like blotches and spots.
cartilaginousGrey 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.
pelagicGulf Flounder
A left-eyed flatfish common along the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern Atlantic coast, marked by three distinctive eyespots arranged in a triangle.
saltwaterHorse-eye Jack
A deep-bodied, silvery jack with an oversized eye, commonly seen in large stationary schools around Caribbean and Florida reefs and harbors.
reefJacksmelt
A larger, long-bodied silverside found along the California and Baja coasts, often schooling in bays and nearshore waters alongside the smaller Topsmelt.
saltwaterKing Mackerel
A large, streamlined mackerel of the warm western Atlantic, prized as a fast offshore game fish and recognizable by its silvery, unmarked body.
pelagicGreat 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.
cartilaginousGlass 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.
freshwaterGreen 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.
saltwaterHi Fin Red Banded Goby
A tiny white goby marked with thin red diagonal bands and a tall, flag-like yellow dorsal fin, seen hovering above its burrow that it shares with a snapping shrimp.
reefHaddock
A slender, silvery-grey relative of the cod, easily recognized by a distinctive black lateral line and a dark thumbprint-like blotch above the pectoral fin.
saltwaterGuitarfish
A shark-like ray with a flattened, guitar-shaped body that blends features of sharks and rays, common on sandy coastal seabeds of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
cartilaginousFirefish
The Firefish is a slender, white-to-orange goby-like fish with a tall sail-like dorsal fin, known for hovering above its burrow and darting inside when startled.
reefGiant Mudskipper
The largest common mudskipper species, a heavy-bodied, predatory amphibious goby that patrols mangrove mudflats across South and Southeast Asia.
brackishGreen Jack
The Green Jack is a schooling eastern Pacific jack with a greenish-blue back, silvery sides, and yellowish lower fins, common in coastal surface waters.
pelagicGiant Trevally
The largest of the trevallies, a powerful, deep-bodied predator of Indo-Pacific reefs and lagoons known for its steep head profile and ferocious ambush strikes.
reef