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Fish Identification Quiz
Fish identification quizzes are great to test your knowledge on fish identification. Start by learning the species in the different categories and when you feel confident take a quiz. The quizzes below contain some of the most common fish species found in Costa Rica and the Eastern pacific.
Dive guides, marine biology students, divemasters and divers and snorkelers that love to ID fish. Take our quiz and see how many of the species you can identify !
Fish ID Quiz #1
Test your Fish ID skills : Scroll through the 20 slides and guess the fish !
1# Fish
Identify this fish.
Barberfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
2# Fish
Identify this fish.
Clarion Angelfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
3# Fish
Identify this fish.
King Angelfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
4# Fish
Identify this fish.
Yellowtail Surgeonfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
5# Fish
Identify this fish.
Green Jack
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
6# Fish
Identify this fish.
Blue-bronze Chub
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
7# Fish
Identify this fish.
Barred Pargo
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
8# Fish
Identify this fish.
Yellow Snapper
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
9# Fish
Identify this fish.
Wavyline Grunt
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
10# Fish
Identify this fish.
Beaubrummel, adult
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
11# Fish
Identify this fish.
Cortez Damselfish, juvenile
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
12# Fish
Identify this fish.
Scissortail Damselfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
13# Fish
Identify this fish.
Fish ID Quiz #2
Test your Fish ID skills : Scroll through the 20 slides and guess the fish !
1# Fish
Identify this fish.
Cortez Angelfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
2# Fish
Identify this fish.
Yellowfin Surgeonfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
3# Fish
Identify this fish.
Oceanic manta ray
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
4# Fish
Identify this fish.
Moorish Idol
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
5# Fish
Identify this fish.
Finescale Triggerfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
6# Fish
Identify this fish.
Bigeye Jack
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
7# Fish
Identify this fish.
Panamic Sergeant Major
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
8# Fish
Identify this fish.
Mexican Hogfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
9# Fish
Identify this fish.
Zebra Moray
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
10# Fish
Identify this fish.
Cortez Damselfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
11# Fish
Identify this fish.
Balloonfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
12# Fish
Identify this fish.
Longnose Butterflyfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
13# Fish
Identify this fish.
Fish ID Quiz #3
Test your Fish ID skills : Scroll through the 20 slides and guess the fish !
1# Fish
Identify this fish.
Stone Scorpionfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
2# Fish
Identify this fish.
Bluebanded Goby
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
3# Fish
Identify this fish.
Panamic Fanged Blenny
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
4# Fish
Identify this fish.
Bicolor Parrotfish
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
5# Fish
Identify this fish.
Giant Damselfish, adult
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
6# Fish
Identify this fish.
Cortez Grunt
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
7# Fish
Identify this fish.
Blue and Gold Snapper
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
8# Fish
Identify this fish.
Pacific Dog Snapper
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
9# Fish
Identify this fish.
Scalloped Hammerhead
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
10# Fish
Identify this fish.
Bullshark
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
11# Fish
Identify this ray.
Round Stingray
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
12# Fish
Identify this eel.
Jeweled Moray
Well done if you got it right ! If not study a bit more !
13# Fish
Identify this fish.
Study the fish Categories
1. Disks and Ovals / Colorful
The first category of disk and oval shaped fish are very important to learn. They are colorful, large and very obvious and the three main families that make up the group can be found on almost every dive.
2. Silvery Fish
Silvery fish have many different family members, though we will look at just a few representatives. As opposed to the colorful butterfly, angel and surgeonfish, the silvery fish tend to blend in better in open water and are usually not found near the colorful bottom.
3. Sloping Head / Tapered Body
This third group of “fish-like” fish, are very important to learn. The are common on most dives and are also highly sought after as food fish. It is especially important to monitor these fish to provide data for fisheries management. Snappers can be very difficult to tell apart from the similarly shaped grunts. One helpful hint is to look at their tails. Snappers tend to have straight, flat tails. They are also known for their habit of snapping their mouth open and shut when caught on hook and line. They have very sharp canine teeth that can provide a nasty bite to the unsuspecting angler. Look closely on your next dive and you may see the small teeth protruding from the side of the mouth. Grunts on the other hand, have slightly notched tails. They get their name from the grunting sounds they emit when threatened. These sounds are created by rubbing together bony teeth plates located in the back of the throat. Since the teeth are in the throat, a diver will never see protruding teeth on a grunt, only big blubbery fish lips.
4. Small Ovals / Damselfish
While divers tend to first notice the larger, more obvious fish on a dive, after a short while the challenge to find new species leads them to change their search image to look for smaller, previously unnoticed fish. Generally, the first new species a diver will encounter will belong to the small oval shaped group. This group is broken into the damselfish and their close cousins the chromis. Damsels are like the surgeonfish in that they eat algae. They do not roam around grazing, but rather tend to small algae gardens like a farmer. These areas are guarded fiercely as the algae farm is the damsels food source. For that reason you can think of the damselfish as not just territorial, but Dam- selfish with its territory. Many damselfish have distinctly different colors as juveniles, often being much brighter and more colorful when they are young and becoming drab with age. (much like us humans!) For this reason, the juveniles have been heavily collected for the aquarium trade and are under heavy fishing pressure. As part of the REEF Fish Survey Project, divers are asked to monitor the juveniles and adults separately in two of the damselfish species – the Cortez damselfish and the giant damselfish.
5. Heavy Body / Large Lips
Heavy bodied, large lipped fish belong to the seabass family. We tend to refer to the larger seabasses as groupers and the smaller seabasses as bass or basslets. These fish are extremely important food fish and are under increasing threats from heavy fishing pressures. Monitoring these fish can help provide valuable data to aid in their protection. Most seabasses are hermaphrodites, meaning the same fish will be both a male and a female during its lifetime. The groupers are all born female and later change sex to become male. Most large groupers also congregate each year to spawn at a specific location, making them easy targets for emerging positioning and fishing technology.
6. Swim with Pectorals / Obvious Scales
The fish in this group all use their pectoral fins to swim with rather than the traditional tail swimming of most other fish. The scales are also quite large and obvious. These fish can also be hermaphrodites, like the groupers, with some fish changing sex and others staying the same. Intermediate and adult fish often have very different appearances compared to the always-male terminal phase. This means learning two colors to be able to ID the same species of fish. Most of the pictures shown in this curriculum are terminal phase males, unless noted.
7. Redish / Big Eyes
This group of reddish fish is normally not seen during day dives due to their nocturnal nature. The reddish color helps them blend in at night and the large eyes help them to see better.
8. Small, Elongated Bottom Dwellers
The small bottom dwelling fish often make up the most interesting fish to watch during your dive. Their approachable nature and interesting behaviors make them great fishwatching finds. Blennies tend to be slightly larger than gobies, but are most easily recognized by their curved body posture and expressive faces. Gobies, though similar in their habitat requirements, tend to sit flat and straight on the bottom. The jawfishes actually live in a burrow in the sand that they excavate and maintain.
9. Odd-Shaped Bottom-Dwellers
This category of fish is made up of families and species that didn’t quite fit anywhere else due to their unique body shapes.
10. Odd-Shaped Swimmers
This group of fish contain families that are unusual in their shape, but are swimmers rather than bottom dwellers.
11. Eels
Though looking like snakes, eels are fish. There are several different types of eels, and we will look at two – garden eels that live in burrows in the sand and moray eels. Moray eels have a bad reputation mainly due to the constant opening and closing of their sharp toothed mouths. However, this is not a threat to divers, as this action pumps water through their gills. Most eels are actually very shy.
12. Sharks & Rays
Even though the sharks and rays are cartilaginous (their skeletons are made of cartilage instead of bones), they are still referred to as fish and count during our surveys.
Fish Categories
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