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.
Queen Triggerfish
The Queen Triggerfish is a strikingly colorful Atlantic reef fish, marked by blue facial lines, a yellow-tinged tail, and elongated dorsal and tail fin filaments.
reef
Ohio Lamprey
The Ohio lamprey is a parasitic, jawless fish native to medium and large rivers of the eastern United States, attaching to host fish with a toothed sucking disc to feed.
freshwater
Ornate Bichir
A striking Central African freshwater fish with an eel-like body covered in an intricate leopard-spot network pattern and a row of spiny finlets along its back.
freshwater
Rainbow Runner
A slender, torpedo-bodied jack with two vivid blue-green stripes, found roaming warm oceans worldwide, often trailing larger pelagic fish like tuna and sharks.
pelagic
Pelican Eel
A deep-sea fish named for its enormous pelican-like pouch of a mouth, which it can expand to engulf prey and water, then slowly expel excess water while retaining any captured prey.
deepsea
Mono Argentus
A flat, disc-shaped, mirror-silver fish with tall yellow-tinged fins, commonly seen schooling in brackish estuaries and harbors across the Indo-Pacific.
brackish
Mola Mola
The heaviest bony fish in the world, an enormous, flattened, disc-shaped giant that appears to be missing a tail, often seen basking sideways at the ocean's surface.
pelagic
Lake Sturgeon
The lake sturgeon is a large, armored, long-lived freshwater fish native to the Great Lakes and Mississippi basin, recognizable by its bony scute rows and shovel-shaped snout.
freshwater
Halfbeak
The common name for slender, surface-swimming fish of the family Hemiramphidae, marked by a short upper jaw and a long, needle-like lower jaw; the Common Halfbeak represents the group.
saltwater
Houndfish
A large, elongated needlefish with a crocodile-like beak of sharp teeth, found cruising just below the surface of warm coastal waters worldwide in search of small fish.
saltwater
Goldsinny Wrasse
A small reddish-brown wrasse marked by a black tail-base spot, the Goldsinny Wrasse patrols rocky Atlantic reefs and is known for picking parasites off other fish.
saltwater
Flounder
A flatfish with both eyes on its upper side that lies camouflaged against sandy or muddy bottoms, ambushing small fish and invertebrates that pass overhead.
saltwater
Cornetfish
An extremely elongated, needle-thin fish with a whip-like tail filament, the Cornetfish hovers near reefs and seagrass, using its long tubular snout to snap up small fish.
reef
Caspian Lamprey
The Caspian lamprey is a parasitic, jawless fish that lives in the brackish Caspian Sea and migrates into tributary rivers of Russia, Iran, and neighboring countries to spawn.
brackish
Chinese Sturgeon
The Chinese sturgeon is a critically endangered anadromous fish that spends its adult life in coastal Chinese seas before migrating far up the Yangtze River to spawn.
brackish
Common Bream
A deep-bodied, bronze-flanked European fish that forms large shoals in slow rivers and lakes, feeding on the bottom with a distinctive protrusible, tube-like mouth.
freshwater
Cardinal Tetra
A tiny, jewel-toned freshwater fish with an iridescent blue stripe running the length of its body above a vivid red stripe below, native to the blackwater tributaries of the Amazon.
freshwater
Bluestriped Grunt
A vividly striped Caribbean reef fish with a bright yellow body crossed by narrow electric-blue lines, often seen in dense daytime schools beneath reef ledges.
reef
Banded Pipefish
The banded pipefish is a slender reef fish patterned with bold reddish-brown and white rings along its entire body, ending in a fan-shaped yellow tail fin marked with a dark spot.
reef
African Lungfish
An eel-like freshwater fish capable of breathing air and surviving months buried in dried mud during droughts, one of the most drought-resistant vertebrates known.
freshwater
Tiger Barb
A small, deep-bodied freshwater fish marked with four bold black vertical bars across a golden-orange body, often seen darting energetically in tight schools.
freshwater
Stoplight Parrotfish
A common Caribbean reef fish whose terminal-phase males show brilliant green bodies with a distinctive yellow spot at the tail base resembling a stoplight.
reef
Targetfish
A silvery, deep-bodied fish marked with three or four bold, curving dark stripes running from head to tail, common in brackish estuaries across the Indo-Pacific.
brackish
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.
saltwater