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.
South American Lungfish
An eel-shaped South American fish that breathes almost entirely through a single lung, allowing it to survive dry seasons buried in mud.
freshwater
Sergeant Major
A common silvery damselfish marked with five bold black vertical bars, resembling military rank stripes, found on shallow tropical reefs.
reef
Steel-blue Killifish
A small, brightly colored West African killifish with a metallic blue body, red spotting, and an elongated lyre-shaped tail. It inhabits swamps and forest streams in Nigeria and Cameroon.
freshwater
Silver Aba
A tail-less, eel-shaped African fish that swims by rippling a long dorsal fin and generates a weak electric field to sense its surroundings.
freshwater
Southern Flounder
The southern flounder is a large left-eyed flatfish of the southeastern United States, closely resembling the summer flounder but lacking prominent eyespots on its body.
saltwater
Shovelnose Ray
An Australian ray with a broad, shovel-shaped snout used to probe sandy seabeds for buried prey, closely related to guitarfish and often found in shallow coastal bays.
cartilaginous
Southern Stingray
A large, diamond-shaped stingray commonly seen gliding over sandy flats of the Caribbean and western Atlantic, often partially buried in sediment.
cartilaginous
Shanny
The most common rockpool blenny of the northeastern Atlantic, the Shanny is a stout, big-eyed fish that tolerates the harsh, fluctuating conditions of the intertidal zone.
saltwater
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
Sepik Rainbowfish
A deep-bodied rainbowfish from the floodplain lakes and swamps of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, covered in unusually fine, numerous scales.
freshwater
Slippery Dick
A common small western-Atlantic wrasse with two dark lateral stripes and a small dark spot at the tail base.
reef
Sarpa Salpa
The sarpa salpa, or salema porgy, is a silvery sparid with golden stripes that grazes on algae over Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic reefs and seagrass beds.
reef
Southern Kingfish
A slender, uniformly silvery drum common in surf zones from the mid-Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, lacking the bold barring of its relatives.
saltwater
Salmon Shark
A powerful, warm-bodied mackerel shark closely related to the Porbeagle, built for speed in the cold North Pacific and named for its preference for salmon.
pelagic
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
Sculpin
A broad-headed, bottom-dwelling fish of the family Cottidae, represented here by the widespread Pacific Staghorn Sculpin, known for its large fan-like pectoral fins and mottled camouflage on sandy and muddy bottoms.
saltwaterSkipjack Shad
A slender, fast-swimming river herring native to major drainages of central and eastern North America, the Skipjack Shad is known for leaping clear of the water while pursuing prey near the surface.
freshwaterSamurai Gourami
A rare, elongated gourami relative from the Ganges-Brahmaputra basin, notable as one of the few labyrinth fish where males mouthbrood the eggs instead of building a bubble nest.
freshwater
Smalltooth Sawfish
A Critically Endangered ray-relative with a long, tooth-lined saw-like snout, once common in warm western Atlantic coastal waters but now greatly reduced in range.
cartilaginous
Sauger
A slender, olive-gold relative of the walleye, best known for the rows of black spots on its spiny dorsal fin and its love of murky river currents.
freshwater
Spinner Shark
A slender, high-speed coastal shark famous for leaping and spinning out of the water while lunging through schools of baitfish.
saltwater
Senegal Bichir
An elongated, primitive-looking freshwater fish with a row of small spiny finlets along its back and paired lung-like breathing organs, retaining features from ancient ray-finned fish ancestors.
freshwater
Silver Scat
A disc-shaped, silvery fish marked with dark vertical bars, found schooling in brackish estuaries and mangroves across the Indo-Pacific and northern Australia.
brackish
Sawfish
A critically endangered ray with a long, tooth-lined snout resembling a saw, used to detect and strike schooling fish in shallow tropical waters.
cartilaginous
Silver Lamprey
The silver lamprey is a freshwater parasitic lamprey of central and eastern North America, recognized by its single-cusped teeth and silvery body, native to Great Lakes and Mississippi River basin drainages.
freshwater
Sand Seatrout
A pale, slender weakfish common in Gulf of Mexico bays and estuaries, closely related to spotted seatrout but lacking body spots.
brackish
Silver Mono
The plain, uniformly silver adult form of the mono, a coin-shaped estuarine fish that loses its faint juvenile eye-bar as it matures. Common in schools around Indo-Pacific mangroves, jetties, and harbors.
brackish
Saddleback Butterflyfish
A large Indo-Pacific butterflyfish with a bold black 'saddle' patch edged in white on the upper rear body.
reef
Snake Eel
Snake Eels are burrowing eels with a hardened, finless tail tip; the banded Harlequin Snake Eel closely mimics the pattern of a venomous sea snake for protection.
reef
Smallmouth Bass
A bronze-green freshwater bass native to eastern North America, prized as a popular sport fish and recognized by its vertical dark bars and reddish eyes. It favors clear, rocky rivers, streams, and lakes.
freshwaterSouthern Blue Whiting
The southern blue whiting is a slender, schooling Gadidae found in cold Southern Hemisphere waters around South America and New Zealand, closely resembling its North Atlantic relative but occupying entirely separate populations.
pelagic
Silver Carp
A large, filter-feeding East Asian carp famous for leaping high out of the water when startled by boat noise, and notorious as an invasive species in North American rivers.
freshwater
Silverstripe Halfbeak
A slender halfbeak marked by a bright silver lateral stripe, found skimming the surface of tropical Indo-Pacific reef lagoons.
reefSpaghetti Eel
An extremely thin, worm-like burrowing eel that spends most of its life buried in sandy or muddy estuarine bottoms across the Indo-Pacific, rarely seen in the open.
brackish
Snakeskin Gourami
A large, elongated Southeast Asian gourami named for the diagonal, snakeskin-like striping pattern across its olive-brown flanks, widely distributed through floodplain and canal habitats.
freshwaterSloane's Viperfish
A slender deep-sea predator armed with needle-like fangs so long they cannot close inside its mouth, along with a light-tipped dorsal spine used to lure prey close.
deepsea
Spotted Boxfish
The Spotted Boxfish shows striking sexual dimorphism: males are blue with orange-edged spots and yellow stripes, while females and juveniles are black covered in white spots.
reef
Slender Giant Moray
The longest of all moray eel species, this extremely elongated, olive-grey eel patrols muddy estuaries and mangrove channels across the Indo-Pacific rather than typical coral reef.
brackish
Spotted Eagle Ray
A striking, diamond-shaped ray covered in bright white spots on a dark back, known for graceful swimming and spectacular leaps above coral reefs.
reef
Spangled Emperor
The spangled emperor is a large, pale grey-green emperor fish of the Indo-Pacific, marked by fine blue spangles on its scales and a strong, crushing jaw for cracking shellfish.
reef
Spotfin Croaker
A robust surf-zone drum from Southern California and Baja, easily identified by a bold black spot at the base of each pectoral fin.
saltwater
Spanish Grunt
The Spanish grunt is a deep-bodied, silvery-yellow reef grunt of the western Atlantic and Caribbean, marked by dark scale rows and a large mouth used to crush hard-shelled prey.
reef
Spotted Croaker
A large Indo-Pacific drum with scattered dark spots along its silvery back, common in turbid estuaries and river mouths.
brackish
Silver Hake
The silver hake is a slim, bright-sided relative of true cod found along the northwestern Atlantic shelf, recognized by its sharp teeth, two dorsal fins, and lack of a chin barbel.
saltwater
Spotted Garden Eel
The Spotted Garden Eel lives in dense colonies of speckled, burrow-dwelling eels on sandy reef slopes across the Indo-Pacific, feeding on drifting plankton.
reef
Skunk Clownfish
A slender, pale peach-to-pink anemonefish marked by a single white stripe running from snout to tail, living in symbiosis with sea anemones on Indo-Pacific reefs.
reef
Squarespot Anthias
A schooling Indo-Pacific anthias; territorial males display a bold rectangular magenta-purple patch on an orange body, while females stay uniformly peach-colored.
reef
Russian Sturgeon
The Russian sturgeon is a large, critically endangered anadromous fish of the Caspian, Black, and Azov Sea basins, known for its short blunt snout and robust armored body.
brackish