FishDatabase

Locations

Fish by state

Every state and the District of Columbia. Alabama leads with 455 species. A state counts a species when GBIF holds two or more US observation records of it there.

Point at a state to read its species count. Click to open it.
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455
Point at a state to read its species count. Click to open it.

All states

Every state, by name

By statute

The official state fish

48 jurisdictions name an official fish, and 64 fish hold the title. That is a different question from the counts above: a statute says which fish a legislature chose, not which fish the state holds most of.

Every official state fish

Method

What the count means

The count is the number of species with two or more United States observation records filed with GBIF for that state. A species with exactly one record is listed on the state page under its own heading, because one record is often a stray, an aquarium release, or a mis-keyed locality.

A second count, the USGS stream-survey list, appears on 49 state pages. That survey samples flowing fresh water in the conterminous United States, so it holds no list for Alaska or Hawaii, and it cannot see a lake or a coastal fish. The two counts answer different questions and are never added.