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.
Freshwater Moray
An unusual moray that spends much of its adult life in rivers and estuaries rather than the sea, identified by its slender olive-brown body and fine dark mottling.
brackish
Big-belly Seahorse
The largest seahorse species in the world, recognized by its notably rounded, protruding belly and mottled brown-yellow coloration, found along the temperate coasts of Australia and New Zealand.
saltwater
Zebra Turkeyfish
A dwarf lionfish species boldly striped in reddish-brown and white, with broad, fan-like pectoral fins used to corner small prey against reef rubble.
reef
Waspfish
A camouflaged, spiny bottom-dweller with fan-like pectoral fins and a mottled reddish-brown pattern, resting on sand or rubble near reefs across the Indo-Pacific.
saltwater
Rock Cook
A tiny olive-brown wrasse of northeastern Atlantic kelp reefs, the Rock Cook forages among rocks and crevices and can change sex during its lifetime.
saltwater
Rex Sole
A slender, deep-dwelling northeastern Pacific flatfish notable for unusually long pectoral fins and plain light brown coloration on cold continental shelf and slope bottoms.
deepsea
Flathead Catfish
A massive, flat-headed catfish with a mottled yellow-brown body and a protruding lower jaw, known for its solitary, ambush-predator lifestyle in large river systems.
freshwater
Comet Grouper
A pale grayish-brown Indo-Pacific grouper marked with elongated, comet-shaped pale streaks and spots, along with faint dark bands radiating from the eye.
reef
Blue Ring Angelfish
An Indo-Pacific angelfish named for the vivid blue ring behind its head, with adults displaying a yellow-brown body crossed by curving electric-blue lines.
reef
Bastard Halibut
An alternate name for the olive flounder, a large East Asian coastal flatfish with a muscular olive-brown mottled body, big toothy mouth, and left-sided eyes.
saltwater
Peacock Flounder
A tropical Atlantic flatfish famous for rapid color-changing camouflage and a pattern of small blue rings on a sandy brown body, with both eyes clustered on its upper left side.
reef
Kelp Rockfish
A mottled brown-and-olive rockfish closely tied to kelp forest habitat along the California coast, where its coloring provides camouflage among kelp stipes and rocky understory.
saltwater
Chocolate Gourami
A small, sensitive Southeast Asian blackwater specialist with a rich chocolate-brown body crossed by pale cream bands, notable as one of the few gouramis that broods its eggs in the mouth.
freshwater
Widow Rockfish
A bronze-brown, large-eyed rockfish that forms dense midwater schools over the outer continental shelf and was once the target of one of the Pacific coast's largest groundfish fisheries.
saltwater
Yellowtail Rockfish
A slender, olive-brown Pacific rockfish with yellow-tinted fins that schools in large midwater aggregations over rocky reefs and open water along the North American coast.
saltwater
Windowpane Flounder
An almost circular, paper-thin Atlantic coast flatfish so translucent that light passes through its body, with light brown mottled coloring and widely spaced eyes.
saltwater
Spotted Scorpionfish
A heavily camouflaged reef fish with mottled brown, red, and white patterning and venomous dorsal spines, blending seamlessly into coral rubble and rocky bottom across the western Atlantic.
reefSpotted Moray
A pale, leopard-patterned eel of Caribbean and western Atlantic reefs, its cream body densely covered in dark brown blotches that give it a mottled, sponge-like appearance.
reef
Red Grouper
The red grouper is a heavy-bodied, reddish-brown reef fish common on rocky and coral bottoms of the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic, known for excavating shallow depressions in sediment.
reef
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
Graysby
The graysby is a small, reddish-brown reef grouper of the tropical western Atlantic, densely covered in pale spots and marked with a few larger dark blotches along its back.
reef
Green Swordtail
The naturally colored, wild-type form of the swordtail, the green swordtail displays an olive-green body with a red-brown stripe and the species' signature elongated tail extension in males.
freshwater
Copper Rockfish
A coppery-brown rockfish with a pale pink-white band along the back half of its body, commonly found near rocky structure and eelgrass beds close to shore.
saltwater
Bluespine Unicornfish
A large Indo-Pacific tang with a bony forehead horn and paired fixed blue-white spines at the tail base, browsing brown macroalgae on coral reefs and reef flats.
reef