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.
Atlantic Herring
A slender, silvery schooling fish that forms some of the largest shoals in the North Atlantic, feeding on plankton and serving as a key forage species for larger fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.
pelagic
Pacific Herring
A slender, silvery schooling fish closely related to the Atlantic Herring, found in cold coastal waters across the North Pacific, where it forms a critical forage base for fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.
pelagic
Marlin
A large, powerful open-ocean billfish with a long rounded spear-like bill and a tall crested back, prized as one of the ocean's fastest and most sought-after game fish.
pelagic
Hatchetfish
Hatchetfish are small, silvery deep-sea fish named for their laterally compressed, blade-like body and large upward-pointing tubular eyes adapted to detect faint light above.
deepsea
Striped Marlin
A swift, streamlined billfish famous for its tall, sail-like blue dorsal fin and rows of pale vertical stripes, ranging widely through the Pacific and Indian Oceans as a top offshore predator.
pelagic
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.
pelagicWhite Marlin
A slender, fast-swimming billfish of the tropical and temperate Atlantic, known for its rounded fins and vivid blue-white coloration.
pelagic
Margined Flyingfish
A large flyingfish with dark, blue-margined wing-like pectoral fins that glides across open tropical and subtropical seas.
pelagic
Marble Trout
Marble trout are a large, distinctively patterned native trout of the Balkan Peninsula, named for the marbled, olive-and-brown pattern covering their body, and are now considered vulnerable due to hybridization with introduced brown trout.
freshwater
Blue Marlin
A massive, cobalt-blue billfish with a long spear-like bill, the Blue Marlin is one of the fastest and largest predators of the open tropical ocean.
pelagic
Atlantic Blue Marlin
A massive, powerful billfish of the open Atlantic, known for its cobalt-blue back, silvery flanks, and a long spear-like bill used to stun prey.
pelagic
Pilotfish
A boldly barred open-ocean jack famous for closely trailing sharks and other large marine animals for shelter and feeding opportunities.
pelagic
Bagre Catfish
A silvery marine and estuarine catfish of the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, recognizable by its elongated sail-like dorsal fin filament and mouth-brooding parenting behavior.
saltwater
Green Sturgeon
The green sturgeon is the most marine-adapted North American sturgeon, ranging widely along the Pacific coast and entering rivers only occasionally to spawn.
saltwaterHerring
One of the world's most abundant fish, the herring forms colossal schools in cold North Atlantic waters and underpins much of the region's marine food web.
pelagicShort-headed Lamprey
The short-headed lamprey is an anadromous, jawless fish of southeastern Australia and Tasmania, recognized by its notably short head and a marine parasitic phase before spawning in rivers.
brackish
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
Garibaldi
A large, brilliant orange damselfish and the official marine state fish of California, found among rocky reefs and kelp forests of the temperate northeast Pacific.
reef
Molly
A hardy, adaptable livebearer native to Mexico and Central America, the common molly thrives in fresh, brackish, and even marine water and is one of the most popular beginner aquarium fish.
freshwaterAustralian Lamprey
The Australian lamprey is a primitive, eel-like jawless fish that spends part of its life as a marine parasite before migrating into coastal rivers of southern Australia and New Zealand to spawn.
brackish
Japanese Anchovy
A small, abundant schooling fish found throughout the coastal waters of Japan, Korea, and China, the Japanese Anchovy is one of the most heavily fished species in the western Pacific and a vital link in regional marine food webs.
pelagic
Marbled Hatchetfish
A tiny South American fish with a deep, keeled belly and enlarged pectoral fins that let it skim and glide just above the water surface to escape predators.
freshwater
Yellow-edged Moray
One of the largest reef morays, marked with an intricate maze-like pattern and a bright yellow-edged dorsal fin, hiding by day in rocky and coral crevices.
reefSnailfish
A tadpole-shaped, scaleless fish family found from shallow tide pools to the deepest ocean trenches; hadal-zone species hold the record for the deepest fish ever observed.
deepsea