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.
Pelagic Stingray
A uniquely oceanic stingray that never touches the seabed, drifting through warm and temperate seas worldwide while feeding on squid and small fish.
pelagic
Mediterranean Flyingfish
The most common flyingfish of the Mediterranean Sea, with long, mottled pectoral fins and a slender body built for gliding above coastal pelagic waters.
pelagic
Round Herring
Named for its unusually rounded, cylindrical body, the Round Herring is a schooling coastal pelagic fish found in temperate and subtropical seas worldwide, serving as an important forage species for larger predators.
pelagic
Longnose Chimaera
A deep-water cartilaginous fish related to sharks, marked by an unmistakably long pointed snout and a slender tapering body cruising continental slopes far below sunlight.
cartilaginous
Stingray
A flat, diamond-shaped cartilaginous fish that spends much of its time partly buried in sand on shallow tropical seafloors, related to sharks and equipped with a long, whip-like venomous-spined tail.
cartilaginous
Japanese Amberjack
The Japanese Amberjack, or yellowtail, is a streamlined pelagic jack from the northwestern Pacific, identified by its bright yellow lateral stripe and yellow-tinged fins.
pelagic
Pacific Mackerel
A schooling pelagic fish of the eastern Pacific with an iridescent blue-green back marked by irregular dark bars and scattered spots along its lower flanks.
pelagic
Silky Shark
A slender, deep-water pelagic shark with smooth, silky-textured skin, among the most abundant sharks found around tropical open-ocean waters.
pelagic
Rainbow Runner
A slender, torpedo-bodied jack with two vivid blue-green stripes, found roaming warm oceans worldwide, often trailing larger pelagic fish like tuna and sharks.
pelagicJapanese Sardine
A schooling pelagic fish abundant in the waters around Japan, the Japanese Sardine undergoes dramatic multi-decade population cycles and forms one of the largest single-species biomasses in the northwest Pacific.
pelagic
Oceanic Whitetip Shark
A robust open-ocean shark identified by its large, rounded, white-mottled fins, once one of the most abundant pelagic sharks but now heavily depleted across tropical open oceans worldwide.
pelagicIndian Oil Sardine
A small, oil-rich pelagic fish abundant along India's western coast and the wider northern Indian Ocean, the Indian Oil Sardine forms massive schools and is one of the region's most heavily monitored fisheries species.
pelagic
Spanish Sardine
A schooling pelagic fish found throughout warm Atlantic and Mediterranean waters, the Spanish Sardine is larger than the related European Sardine and forms an important forage species across its wide tropical to subtropical range.
pelagic
Hogchoker
A small, tough-skinned estuarine sole tolerant of fresh to salt water, with a mottled brown crossbanded body, rounded outline, and no visible pectoral fins.
brackish
Pompano
A deep-bodied, silvery jack with a forked tail, found along sandy coastal shores of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Cownose Ray
A migratory, schooling ray with a distinctive indented snout, famous for traveling in dense groups of hundreds along coastal waters.
pelagicWhite Weakfish
A slender, pale silvery-white weakfish common in estuaries and coastal lagoons along the South American Atlantic coast.
brackish
Weakfish
The Weakfish is an iridescent greenish-bronze sciaenid with diagonal spotted markings, found in mid-Atlantic estuaries and coastal waters of the U.S.
brackish
Spinner Shark
A slender, high-speed coastal shark famous for leaping and spinning out of the water while lunging through schools of baitfish.
saltwater
Dolly Varden
A char of Pacific coastal rivers named for a colorfully dressed Dickens character, closely related to and often confused with Arctic Char.
freshwater
Bonnethead Shark
The smallest hammerhead species, easily recognized by its smooth, shovel-shaped head, common in shallow coastal waters of the Americas.
cartilaginous
Pacific Blue-eye
A tiny, schooling fish common in coastal streams and estuaries of eastern Australia, easily recognized by its reflective, luminous blue eyes.
brackish
Butterfly Ray
A ray with an exceptionally wide, flattened disc and short tail, resembling a butterfly in outline as it glides low over sandy coastal seabeds.
cartilaginous
White Perch
A silvery, deep-bodied temperate bass rather than a true perch, common in brackish estuaries and coastal rivers of eastern North America.
brackish