Fischwiki /The species index

The collection.

20 species. Fresh water, salt water, and the places in between.
Begin with a name, or see what catches your eye.

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20 species in the archive

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FIG. 14

Anglerfish

Lophius piscatorius

Mostly mouth. It waits on the seabed and fishes, quite literally, with a rod growing out of its head.

Marine

FIG. 15

Atlantic bluefin tuna

Thunnus thynnus

One of the largest bony fish alive, and a warm-muscled long-distance swimmer that crosses the Atlantic.

Marine

FIG. 12

Atlantic cod

Gadus morhua

For centuries cod fed whole coastlines, and then the coastlines nearly fished it out.

Marine / Brackish

FIG. 11

Atlantic herring

Clupea harengus

A schooling fish of the North Atlantic, and one of the most important fish in European economic and kitchen history.

Marine / Brackish

FIG. 08

Atlantic salmon

Salmo salar

The archetypal migrant: it grows up at sea and returns to its home river to spawn.

Freshwater / Brackish / Marine

FIG. 07

Brown trout

Salmo trutta

One species, several lives: the stream-dwelling brown trout, the lake trout and the sea-going sea trout.

Freshwater / Brackish / Marine

FIG. 04

Common carp

Cyprinus carpio

One of the oldest farmed fish in the world. Wild river populations live alongside domesticated forms introduced around the globe.

Freshwater / Brackish

FIG. 09

European eel

Anguilla anguilla

Its life cycle is one of the great unsolved puzzles of natural history, and the species is now critically endangered.

Freshwater / Brackish / Marine

FIG. 02

European perch

Perca fluviatilis

Probably the first fish many European children ever catch, recognisable by its dark bars and spiny back.

Freshwater / Brackish

FIG. 13

European plaice

Pleuronectes platessa

A flatfish that starts life the right way up and then, slowly, moves one of its eyes.

Marine / Brackish

FIG. 10

European sea sturgeon

Acipenser sturio

Once common enough to be an everyday food on the Elbe and the Rhine, now one of the rarest fish in Europe.

Freshwater / Brackish / Marine

FIG. 18

Great white shark

Carcharodon carcharias

The largest predatory fish alive, and much less interested in people than its reputation suggests.

Marine

FIG. 01

Northern pike

Esox lucius

An ambush predator of weedy lakes and slow rivers, built almost entirely for one thing: the sudden lunge.

Freshwater / Brackish

FIG. 16

Ocean sunfish

Mola mola

A fish that looks as if the back half was never finished.

Marine

FIG. 17

Red lionfish

Pterois volitans

A striped, slow-moving reef fish with venomous spines, and one of the most damaging invasive marine fish anywhere.

Marine

FIG. 05

Tench

Tinca tinca

A slow, olive-gold fish of warm, weedy ponds that seems to be made mostly of slime.

Freshwater / Brackish

FIG. 06

Wels catfish

Silurus glanis

The largest native freshwater fish of central Europe: broad-headed, scaleless and mostly nocturnal.

Freshwater / Brackish

FIG. 20

West Indian Ocean coelacanth

Latimeria chalumnae

Known only from fossils and assumed extinct since the Cretaceous, until a live one was landed in South Africa in 1938.

Marine

FIG. 19

Whale shark

Rhincodon typus

The largest living fish, and it eats plankton.

Marine

FIG. 03

Zander

Sander lucioperca

A pale, glassy-eyed predator that does its best work in murky water and at dusk.

Freshwater / Brackish