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.
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
Spot Croaker
Spot is a small, deep-bodied estuarine fish easily identified by a single dark shoulder spot and faint oblique bars along its upper body.
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.
cartilaginousSpotted 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
Sand Seatrout
A pale, slender weakfish common in Gulf of Mexico bays and estuaries, closely related to spotted seatrout but lacking body spots.
brackish
Spiny Dogfish
A slender, small schooling shark with sharp spines in front of each dorsal fin and no anal fin, one of the most abundant sharks worldwide.
cartilaginous
Saddleback Butterflyfish
A large Indo-Pacific butterflyfish with a bold black 'saddle' patch edged in white on the upper rear body.
reef
Spined Loach
The Spined Loach is a small, striped bottom-dweller named for the tiny erectile spine beneath each eye, found in slow-moving European and Asian waters.
freshwater
Sand Tiger Shark
A bulky, fierce-looking but generally docile shark with protruding rows of needle-like teeth, commonly seen hovering near shipwrecks and reef caves along temperate and subtropical coastlines.
cartilaginousSouthern 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
Pilotfish
A boldly barred open-ocean jack famous for closely trailing sharks and other large marine animals for shelter and feeding opportunities.
pelagic
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
Red Lionfish
Instantly recognizable for its fan-like, striped fins and venomous spines, the red lionfish is a native Indo-Pacific reef predator that has become a damaging invasive species in the Western Atlantic.
reef
Snowflake Moray
The Snowflake Moray is a mottled black-and-yellow reef eel with blunt, crushing teeth adapted for feeding on crabs and shrimp rather than fish.
reef
Rainbow Killifish
A vividly patterned annual killifish from Mozambique's seasonal floodplain pools, with males displaying a rainbow of red, blue and orange scale colors.
freshwater
Sohal Tang
A powerfully built surgeonfish endemic to the Red Sea and nearby Arabian waters, marked by bold blue and black striping and known for fiercely defending shallow reef flats.
reef
Port Jackson Shark
A distinctive, slow-moving Australian bullhead shark with a blunt pig-like snout, bold harness-shaped markings, and blunt crushing teeth for eating shellfish.
saltwater
Spotted Wolffish
A large, deep-water wolffish covered in bold dark spots, found in cold Arctic and North Atlantic waters on rocky and gravel seafloor.
deepsea
Powder Blue Tang
A vivid powder-blue surgeonfish with a black facial mask and white throat patch, common on shallow reef edges across the Indian Ocean.
reef
Silverstripe Halfbeak
A slender halfbeak marked by a bright silver lateral stripe, found skimming the surface of tropical Indo-Pacific reef lagoons.
reef
Princess Parrotfish
A Caribbean parrotfish whose blue-green terminal males show bright orange and blue face stripes over a green body.
reef
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
Redear Sunfish
A deep-bodied sunfish named for the bright red-orange margin on its black ear flap, notable for its specialized diet of snails and other mollusks in warm southern lakes and ponds.
freshwater
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.
freshwater
Rock Wrasse
A common temperate wrasse of California and Baja kelp forests, recognized by its elongated olive-green body, salmon-pink belly, and a dark saddle-like blotch near the tail.
saltwater
Spinner Shark
A slender, high-speed coastal shark famous for leaping and spinning out of the water while lunging through schools of baitfish.
saltwater
Redfish
A coppery-bronze estuarine predator famous for the large black eyespot near its tail, the Redfish is a mainstay of shallow coastal flats along the Gulf and southeastern Atlantic coasts.
brackish
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
Regal Angelfish
The Regal Angelfish is a striking orange-and-blue-striped reef fish with a large dark eye patch and a bold yellow tail, found on well-developed coral reefs across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
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
Rubber Lip Pleco
The Rubber Lip Pleco is a South American armored catfish with thick, fleshy lips adapted for grazing algae off rocks in fast-flowing rivers.
freshwater
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
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.
reefSkipjack 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.
freshwater
Rainbow Wrasse
A slender Mediterranean and eastern-Atlantic wrasse; terminal males have a vivid orange zigzag stripe along a blue-green body.
saltwater
Slippery Dick
A common small western-Atlantic wrasse with two dark lateral stripes and a small dark spot at the tail base.
reef
Racoon Butterflyfish
An Indo-Pacific butterflyfish with a black 'mask' over the eyes bordered by white and a broad yellow body.
reef
Senorita
A slender, golden-brown kelp forest wrasse of the California coast known for its cleaning behavior, picking parasites off larger fish such as sheephead.
saltwater
Piranha
A deep-bodied South American river fish famed for its sharp interlocking teeth and coordinated group feeding behavior, though most species are opportunistic scavengers.
freshwater
Shortnose Gar
A slim-bodied gar of the Mississippi basin with the shortest, broadest snout of the North American gars, sparsely marked with dark spots.
freshwater
Queenfish
A small, slender drum common in California bays and nearshore waters, notable for forming large, tightly packed schools near the surface.
saltwater
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
Potter's Angelfish
A small Hawaiian endemic dwarf angelfish, rusty orange with blue-grey and fine wavy blue lines.
reef
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
Poor Cod
The poor cod is a small, golden-brown Gadidae common around rocky reefs and harbors of the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, identified by its short chin barbel and dark pectoral-fin blotch.
saltwater
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
Peruvian Anchoveta
A small, slender schooling fish found in colossal numbers within the nutrient-rich Humboldt Current off Peru and Chile, considered one of the most abundant fish species on Earth.
pelagic
Short-snouted Seahorse
The short-snouted seahorse is a stocky, spiny-headed species found in coastal waters of the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, distinguished from its long-snouted relative by a notably short, thick snout.
saltwater