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.
Bat Ray
A large, dark-backed eagle ray of the eastern Pacific coast, often seen gliding over sand flats or excavating pits to unearth buried prey.
cartilaginous
Longfin African Conger
A slender, sand-dwelling conger with a distinctly long dorsal fin and a two-tone body, found burrowing along reef flats and lagoons across the Indo-Pacific and East African coast.
reef
Topsmelt
A slender, silvery schooling fish common in bays, estuaries, and kelp beds along the eastern Pacific coast, often seen shoaling near the surface in large numbers.
saltwater
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
European Anchovy
A slender, small-bodied schooling fish with a distinctive pointed snout and underslung mouth, found in enormous shoals along European and North African coasts and throughout the Mediterranean.
pelagic
Catalina Goby
A tiny, vividly colored goby with electric blue bands over a red-orange body, found perched on rocky reefs and kelp holdfasts off the Pacific coast.
reef
Sprat
A small, slender schooling herring relative found in vast numbers along European coasts, the Sprat is an important forage fish that filters plankton from the water column in dense, fast-moving shoals.
pelagic
Kelp Bass
The kelp bass is a mottled olive-brown temperate reef fish closely tied to kelp forests along the eastern Pacific coast, often seen hovering near kelp fronds and rocky structure.
saltwater
Chocolate Australe
A brown color form of the lyretail panchax, a small West-Central African killifish with fine carmine spotting and an elongated lyre-shaped tail. It lives in shaded forest streams near Gabon's coast.
freshwater
Tidepool Sculpin
A tiny, well-camouflaged sculpin that spends its life in rocky intertidal tidepools along the Pacific coast, able to survive being stranded above water at low tide.
saltwater
Lined Seahorse
A medium-sized seahorse of the western Atlantic coast, variably colored from black to bright orange, often marked with fine pale lines on the neck and named for these subtle streaks.
saltwater
Longhorn Sculpin
A large, spiny-headed sculpin common on sandy and rocky seafloors along the northwest Atlantic coast, easily recognized by its oversized head and fan-like pectoral fins.
saltwater
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
Twaite Shad
A slender anadromous herring relative found along European and North African coasts, the Twaite Shad migrates into estuaries and rivers to spawn and is distinguished from the Allis Shad by its row of dark flank spots.
brackish
Diamond Killifish
A tiny, unusually deep-bodied killifish from Gulf Coast salt marshes, named for its compressed, diamond-shaped profile. It tolerates wide swings in salinity within tidal creeks and marsh pools.
brackish
Bay Anchovy
One of the most abundant fish in Atlantic and Gulf Coast estuaries, the tiny Bay Anchovy is a key forage species that tolerates a wide range of salinities from open bays to nearly fresh tidal creeks.
brackish
Summer Flounder
The summer flounder, also called fluke, is a left-eyed flatfish common along the US Atlantic coast, prized as a popular sport fish and known for its mottled camouflage pattern.
saltwater
Threadfin Shad
A small, deep-bodied herring relative native to the Gulf Coast and Mississippi basin, the Threadfin Shad is widely stocked in freshwater reservoirs across the United States as an important forage fish.
freshwater
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
Bocaccio
A large, streamlined rockfish with a prominent lower jaw and reddish-brown to olive coloring, once heavily depleted along the Pacific coast and now the focus of long-term rebuilding efforts.
saltwater
Atlantic Menhaden
A deep-bodied, oily, silvery schooling fish found in vast numbers along the U.S. Atlantic coast, notable for a large dark shoulder spot and its outsized ecological role as a filter-feeding forage species.
pelagic
Alewife
A small, silvery anadromous herring native to the Atlantic coast of North America, recognizable by a single dark shoulder spot, that migrates from the ocean into freshwater rivers and lakes each spring to spawn.
brackish
Bay Pipefish
The bay pipefish is a long, slender pipefish common in eelgrass beds and estuaries along the Pacific coast of North America, closely matching the green-brown color and shape of the eelgrass blades it hides among.
brackish
Pacific Anchovy
A small, slender schooling fish abundant along the eastern Pacific coast from Canada to Baja California, the Pacific Anchovy is a key forage species known for its long snout and prominent silvery lateral stripe.
pelagic