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.
Electric Eel
A long, air-breathing South American knifefish, not a true eel, famous for generating powerful electric discharges from specialized organs used to stun prey, navigate, and defend itself.
freshwater
Electric Ray
A round-bodied ray capable of generating a powerful electric shock from specialized organs, used to stun prey and deter predators.
cartilaginous
Electric Catfish
An African freshwater catfish capable of generating strong electric discharges from specialized body tissue used for hunting and defense.
freshwater
Swamp Eel
A limbless, scaleless, snake-like eel that burrows through mud in freshwater and brackish swamps of South and Southeast Asia and can survive in poorly oxygenated water using accessory air breathing.
brackishSpaghetti 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
Moray Eel
A long, serpentine reef predator that hides in crevices by day, identified by its scaleless body, continuous fin along the back, and powerful jaws with a rarely seen second set of pharyngeal jaws.
reef
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.
freshwaterGulper Eel
A bizarre deep-sea eel with a massively oversized, hinged jaw and a whip-like tail far longer than its body, adapted to swallow prey larger than itself in the food-scarce abyss.
deepsea
Garden Eel
Garden Eels are slender, colony-forming eels that live permanently anchored in sandy burrows near reefs, swaying in the current as they catch drifting plankton.
reef
European Eel
The European Eel is a catadromous fish found across European rivers and lakes, now critically endangered after a population collapse exceeding 90% since the 1980s.
freshwaterCusk Eel
An elongated, eel-shaped deep-sea fish whose family holds the record for the deepest fish ever documented, recovered from a trench nearly 8,400 meters down.
deepsea
Marbled Electric Ray
A bottom-dwelling electric ray capable of generating a strong electric shock, patterned with a mottled marbled coloration for camouflage on the seabed.
cartilaginous
Electric Yellow Cichlid
A vividly yellow mbuna cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi's rocky shorelines, popular in aquariums for its bright, almost uniform coloration and relatively peaceful temperament.
freshwater
Electric Blue Hap
One of the most vividly colored Lake Malawi haplochromine cichlids, males display an intense electric-blue body that makes this predatory species a standout among the lake's rock-dwelling cichlids.
freshwater
Wolf Eel
The Wolf Eel is a large, spotted, eel-shaped fish of North Pacific rocky reefs that forms long-term pairs and cooperatively guards its eggs in a shared den.
saltwater
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
Ribbon Eel
The Ribbon Eel is a slender, brightly colored moray that changes from a black juvenile to a blue male to a yellow female over its lifetime while anchored in a sand burrow.
reef
Pelican Eel
A deep-sea fish named for its enormous pelican-like pouch of a mouth, which it can expand to engulf prey and water, then slowly expel excess water while retaining any captured prey.
deepsea
Conger Eel
The Conger Eel is the largest eel in European waters, a strictly marine species inhabiting rocky reefs and wrecks across the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater
American Eel
The American Eel spends most of its life in North American rivers and estuaries before migrating once to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and die.
freshwater
Marbled Swamp Eel
A snake-like, limbless eel of Central and South American swamps and slow rivers, marked with a mottled, marbled pattern and equipped with air-breathing lungs-like tissue for surviving in stagnant water.
freshwater
Asian Swamp Eel
A slender, limbless, snake-like eel native to rice paddies and marshes of East and Southeast Asia, known for its air-breathing ability and its establishment as an introduced species in parts of the southeastern United States.
freshwater
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
Green Moray Eel
The Green Moray Eel is a large Atlantic reef eel whose apparent green color actually comes from a yellow mucus layer coating its naturally blue-grey skin.
reef