Fish ID

[JamesD]

Does anyone have good websites which will aid in fish identification, for example, I have a fish I want to identify that I took a picture of in Hawaii,

Now while I can find a lot of sites with pictures of fish from Hawaii, it's hard to find which fish it is without just going through every picture, right now I'm not even able to identify what category (beyond Fish) to look in.

Any good advice, or am I doomed to just reading and looking at lots of pictures?

 

[Midnight Star]

Try posting it here, and i'm sure someone will be able to help you identify it

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Mike.

 

[REII]

Try this site http://www.dfg.ca.gov/Mrd/msfindx0.html

TOM

 

[JamesD]

This is the fellow

But I guess overall I'm looking to try and be able to better identify fish myself, at least basic stuff, currently I either KNOW what a particular fish is, or have no clue, I can't say "well it's probably this family because of X, Y and Z"

Probably just another pipe dream, but hey... can live in hope.

 

[REII]

Cute little sucker isn't he?

TOM

 

[Monkey Knife-fight]

Get some ID books. I've never really found the internet to work as well as good ID books.

EDIT: Looks like a stocky hawkfish: http://species.fishindex.com/photo_29939cirrhitus_pinnulatus.html

 

[justleesa]

Yes it is a Stocky Hawkfish

I'm moving the thread to our Name That Critter forum.

 

[Monkey Knife-fight]

Hawaii fish are pretty easy to narrow down once you get a few characteristics down. Like hawkfish tend to be resting on the reef unlike most hawaii fish. Surgeonfish have the barb on their tails. Wrasses have a recognizable shape and are usually crazy colors...etc etc. Like any other place you look up fish for awhile and you'll start to get them down.

 

[Midnight Star]

That is a cool looking little fellow.

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Mike.

 

[justleesa]

They can get pretty big, as far as hawkfish go...the biggest I've seen was about 11-12". The Hawaiian name is po'o-pa'a which means hard head.