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.
Six Line Wrasse
The Six Line Wrasse is a small, brightly colored reef fish with six narrow orange stripes running along a purple-blue body and a black spot near the tail, often darting through coral rubble.
reef
Pyjama Cardinalfish
A small, boldly patterned reef fish with a yellow-spotted rear half, a dark bar through the eye, and large eyes suited to nocturnal feeding. It shelters among coral branches and sea urchin spines by day.
reef
Atlantic Menhaden
A deep-bodied, oily, silvery schooling fish found in vast numbers along the U.S. Atlantic coast, notable for a large dark shoulder spot and its outsized ecological role as a filter-feeding forage species.
pelagic
Yellow Perch
A golden-yellow freshwater fish marked by dark vertical bars and orange-tinged fins, native to lakes and slow-moving rivers across North America. It is one of the most abundant and widely recognized panfish species.
freshwater
Yellowtail Snapper
A slender Caribbean reef fish with a bold golden stripe running from snout to its deeply forked yellow tail. Often seen swimming in open water above reefs rather than hugging the bottom.
reef
Potato Grouper
The potato grouper is one of the largest reef groupers, a pale grey fish covered in dark blotches resembling potato skin, found on Indo-Pacific reefs and known for its curious, approachable behavior toward divers.
reef
Pacific Anchovy
A small, slender schooling fish abundant along the eastern Pacific coast from Canada to Baja California, the Pacific Anchovy is a key forage species known for its long snout and prominent silvery lateral stripe.
pelagic
Bluestripe Pipefish
The bluestripe pipefish is a tiny reef pipefish with a bright blue lateral stripe running along a tan or orange body, often seen hovering near crevices where it also cleans parasites from larger fish.
reef
American Gizzard Shad
A deep-bodied, blunt-snouted herring relative common in lakes and rivers across eastern and central North America, the American Gizzard Shad is a highly abundant forage fish named for its muscular, gizzard-like stomach.
freshwaterPacific Menhaden
A deep-bodied, silvery schooling fish found along the Pacific coast of South America, marked by a row of dark spots along its flank and adapted to feeding within the highly productive Humboldt Current upwelling system.
pelagic
Gizzard Shad
A deep-bodied, silvery freshwater fish easily recognized by its blunt, rounded snout and long, whip-like filament trailing from the last dorsal fin ray, common in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs across North America.
freshwater
Cherry Salmon
The cherry salmon is a Pacific salmon native to East Asia that exists in two forms: a smaller freshwater-resident form called yamame and a larger, silvery sea-run form, both named for the pink cherry-blossom hue of spawning fish.
freshwater
Bala Shark
A torpedo-shaped, silver freshwater fish named for its shark-like body outline, though it is a true minnow relative, not a shark. Bold black margins on its fins make it a striking, fast-swimming schooler of Southeast Asian rivers.
freshwater
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.
deepsea
Skipjack Tuna
A small, fast-swimming tuna with bold dark stripes along its lower body, forming enormous schools across warm oceans and supporting the world's largest tuna fishery.
pelagic
Gambusia
A small, hardy North American livebearer famous for its voracious appetite for mosquito larvae, widely introduced worldwide for mosquito control with significant ecological consequences.
freshwater
Mosquitofish
A small, drab livebearer native to the central and southeastern United States, the mosquitofish is famous for its voracious appetite for mosquito larvae and has been introduced worldwide for pest control.
freshwaterWhitefish
Lake whitefish are silvery, streamlined members of the salmon family that inhabit cold, deep lakes across North America, feeding along the bottom for insect larvae and small invertebrates.
freshwater
Brook Lamprey
The brook lamprey is a small, non-parasitic freshwater lamprey of Pacific Northwest streams that never feeds as an adult, spending most of its life buried as a filter-feeding larva.
freshwater
Far Eastern Brook Lamprey
A small, jawless, non-parasitic lamprey native to clear freshwater streams across Japan, Korea, and mainland East Asia, spending most of its life as a burrowing larva before a brief non-feeding adult stage.
freshwater
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.
saltwaterFourwing Flyingfish
A true "four-winged" flyingfish with both enlarged pectoral and pelvic fins, allowing exceptionally long surface glides across the tropical Atlantic Ocean.
pelagic
Blackfin Clownfish
An orange anemonefish with a single white head bar and distinctive black-edged pelvic and anal fins, endemic to reefs around the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
reef
Kawakawa
A compact, fast schooling tuna of the Indo-Pacific with a wavy dark pattern on its back and several distinctive dark spots between the pectoral and pelvic fins.
pelagic