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.
Little Tunny
A speedy, hard-fighting mackerel relative marked by distinctive wavy dark markings on its back, found in warm coastal and offshore waters of the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
pelagic
Gafftopsail Catfish
A silvery Atlantic sea catfish named for the tall, sail-like extension of its first dorsal fin ray and long trailing pectoral fin filaments.
saltwater
Gag Grouper
The gag grouper is an elongated, grey-brown grouper of the western Atlantic recognized by its faint worm-like markings and slender build compared to other groupers.
reef
Eagle Ray
A diamond-shaped ray with a distinctive protruding duck-like snout, often seen gliding gracefully near the seafloor in coastal waters of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
cartilaginous
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
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
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
Redbanded Seabream
The redbanded seabream is a deep-bodied, pinkish-red sparid marked by four to five dark vertical bands, found over rocky and sandy bottoms in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Pacific Red Snapper
A bright reddish-pink snapper of rocky reefs along the Eastern Pacific coast from Mexico to Peru, closely resembling its Atlantic namesake but found in a different ocean.
reef
Mummichog
A stout, hardy killifish common in salt marshes and estuaries along the North American Atlantic coast, well known for its extreme tolerance of changing salinity and oxygen levels.
brackish
Greenland Halibut
A cold-water, deep-sea North Atlantic and Arctic flatfish with a dark body on both sides, a large toothy mouth, and a less flattened posture than typical flounders.
deepsea
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.
reefWitch Flounder
A slender, tongue-shaped deep-water North Atlantic flatfish with plain grayish-brown coloration, fine scales, and a preference for cold muddy shelf and slope bottoms.
deepsea
White Hake
White hake is a large, elongated cod relative of the western North Atlantic shelf and slope, larger and grayer than red hake, with long pelvic fin filaments.
saltwater
Tiger Grouper
The tiger grouper is a slender reef grouper of the tropical western Atlantic marked with diagonal dark bars on a pale to reddish-brown body, resembling tiger-like striping.
reef
Scaled Sardine
A small, deep-bodied silvery fish that forms dense inshore schools along the Western Atlantic coast, easily confused with other small herring-like species.
saltwater
Hake
A slender, silvery predatory fish with a large toothy mouth and two widely separated dorsal fins, Hake patrol continental shelf waters of the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Goliath Grouper
One of the largest bony fish on Atlantic reefs, the goliath grouper is a massive, mottled brown ambush predator that shelters around wrecks, caves, and mangrove-lined shorelines.
reef
Blue Skate
One of the largest skates in the northeast Atlantic, now rare and heavily protected after historic overfishing collapsed its populations across much of its former range.
cartilaginous
Banded Rudderfish
A western Atlantic jack whose boldly banded juveniles shelter beneath floating debris, later maturing into plainer, olive-silvery adults resembling small amberjacks.
saltwater
Alaska Pollock
An abundant, silvery schooling fish of the cold North Pacific and Bering Sea, closely related to Atlantic Cod and among the most numerous commercially significant fish in the world.
saltwater