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.
Cobia
A large, elongated, shark-like fish that roams warm coastal waters worldwide and often follows rays, turtles, and floating structure.
pelagic
Bluebanded Sea Bream
An Indo-Pacific reef fish, actually a snapper, marked by diagonal electric-blue bands on yellow and trailing fin filaments in adults.
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
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
Permit
A deep-bodied, silvery flats and reef fish of the western Atlantic, famed among anglers for its wary nature and sickle-shaped fins.
reef
Pallid Sturgeon
The pallid sturgeon is a large, pale, endangered fish of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, adapted to fast, turbid water with a flattened snout and reduced eyes.
freshwater
Ocean Sunfish
The ocean sunfish is the heaviest bony fish alive, a flattened giant with no true tail that drifts through temperate and tropical seas feeding on jellyfish.
pelagic
Goldfish
A hardy freshwater fish domesticated from the wild Prussian carp, prized worldwide as an ornamental pond and aquarium species in many color forms.
freshwater
Florida Pompano
A deep-bodied, silvery fish with a forked tail and yellow-tinged fins, common in sandy surf zones along the western Atlantic coast.
saltwater
Caspian Lamprey
The Caspian lamprey is a parasitic, jawless fish that lives in the brackish Caspian Sea and migrates into tributary rivers of Russia, Iran, and neighboring countries to spawn.
brackish
Common Roach
A widespread European freshwater fish with a silvery body and distinctive red-orange fins, forming large shoals in slow rivers, lakes, and canals.
freshwater
Atlantic Sturgeon
The Atlantic sturgeon is a large, armored anadromous fish of eastern North America, spending years at sea before returning to coastal rivers to spawn.
brackish
Black Skirt Tetra
A silvery-gray tetra with a flowing black skirt-like tail and fins, whose dark coloration typically fades somewhat as the fish matures.
freshwater
Black Marlin
A massive, powerful billfish of the Indo-Pacific known for its rigid, immovable pectoral fins and status as one of the largest bony fish in the ocean.
pelagic
Silver Bream
A silvery European freshwater fish with notably large, protruding eyes, often confused with young Common Bream but distinguished by its larger scales.
freshwater
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
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
Red Drum
The Red Drum is a coppery-bronze coastal fish of the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, best known for the dark eyespot near its tail.
brackish
Japanese Eel
The Japanese Eel is an East Asian catadromous fish that migrates from freshwater rivers to offshore Pacific spawning grounds, and is now classified as Endangered.
freshwater
Common Dragonet
A sand-dwelling northeastern Atlantic fish with striking sexual dimorphism, males growing a dramatically elongated dorsal fin and long tail streamers.
saltwater
Bloodfin Tetra
A slim silvery tetra with bright red fins, prized as a hardy, active schooling fish that tolerates cooler water than most tropicals.
freshwater
Banded Gourami
A hardy South Asian labyrinth fish known for its diagonal orange-blue stripes and ability to gulp air in oxygen-poor water.
freshwater
Atlantic Croaker
The Atlantic Croaker is a silvery-bronze estuarine fish with a single chin barbel and faint wavy mottling, abundant along the western Atlantic coast.
brackishAtlantic Silverside
A slender, schooling coastal fish common along the western Atlantic shoreline, marked by a bright silver stripe running down each flank.
brackish