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.
Cunner
A small, cold-hardy wrasse with highly variable coloring, found on rocky reefs and kelp beds along the western Atlantic and known for becoming dormant in winter.
saltwater
Cuckoo Catfish
A spotted African catfish from Lake Tanganyika famous for a brood-parasitic strategy in which it sneaks its own eggs into the mouths of incubating cichlids.
freshwater
Devil Scorpionfish
A master of camouflage, the devil scorpionfish blends into reef rubble until threatened, when it flashes brightly colored inner fins as a startle display.
reef
California Halibut
A large, active eastern Pacific flatfish with a big toothy mouth, uniform brown coloration, and an unusual mix of left- and right-eyed individuals within the species.
saltwater
Cero Mackerel
A slender, fast-swimming mackerel of Caribbean and western Atlantic waters, identified by a bronze-yellow stripe and rows of yellow-orange spots along its silvery sides.
pelagic
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 Dab
The common dab is a small, right-eyed flatfish of European shelf seas, identified by its rough, sandpapery skin and curved lateral line above the pectoral fin.
saltwater
Clown Killifish
A tiny, torpedo-shaped killifish from West African rainforest streams, patterned with alternating black and cream bands and a fiery red-and-blue tail resembling a tiny rocket.
freshwater
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
Corydoras Catfish
A small, armored South American catfish genus known for its bottom-dwelling, social schooling habits and distinctive bony body plates instead of scales.
freshwater
Coffinfish
A rotund, soft-skinned anglerfish relative that shuffles along the deep seafloor on stubby, arm-like fins and dangles a tiny lure to attract prey close to its wide mouth.
deepsea
Butterfly Splitfin
A striking Mexican livebearer known for its black body, yellow-orange tail band, and unusual reproductive biology shared with other goodeids.
freshwaterCalifornia Flyingfish
The largest flyingfish species in the eastern Pacific, this stout, silvery glider uses its oversized wing-like fins to skim above the waves off California and Mexico.
pelagic
Blind Cave Tetra
A ghostly pink, eyeless cavefish descended from surface-dwelling Mexican tetras, adapted over millennia to life in total darkness within Mexican limestone caves.
freshwater
Blobfish
A gelatinous deep-sea sculpin whose flesh is slightly less dense than water, letting it hover just above the seafloor without expending much energy swimming.
deepsea
Black Rockfish
A dark, deep-bodied schooling rockfish common over rocky reefs and kelp forests along the Pacific coast, often seen in large surface-oriented aggregations.
saltwater
Bleak
A small, slender, silvery cyprinid, the bleak forms huge surface shoals in rivers and lakes, snapping at insects and once prized for its scales used in imitation pearls.
freshwater
Banjo Catfish
A flattened, camouflaged South American catfish with a body shape resembling a banjo, spending most of its time buried in sand or hidden among leaf litter.
freshwater
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
Bandwing Flyingfish
A small, slender flyingfish of the tropical Atlantic, identified by the dark crossbands on its otherwise translucent pectoral wing fins as it glides over the open sea.
pelagic
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
Zebrafish
A small, striped South Asian minnow renowned worldwide as a key model organism for genetics and developmental biology research, alongside its popularity as an aquarium fish.
freshwater
Streaked Spinefoot
A large silvery-gray rabbitfish marked with fine dark streaks and scattered pale spots, commonly found in estuaries, mangroves, and coastal reefs across the Indo-Pacific.
brackish
Thorny Seahorse
A spiky Indo-Pacific seahorse covered in long, sharp bony projections, giving it a thorny, almost alien silhouette that helps it disappear among sponges and gorgonian coral.
reef