National Museum of Natural History Vertebrate Zoology Fishes Collections

The collections are worldwide in coverage. We have the world's largest holdings of Indo-Pacific marine shore fishes and extensive coverage from freshwaters of both North and South America.

The National Collection is the principal repository of type specimens in the United States; the 18,955 lots of types comprise the largest type collection of fishes in the world. Please note that slightly over 50% of our holdings are presently listed in our dataset and we are constantly adding records. Approximately 95% of families with freshwater-dwelling species, but less than 50% of those of saltwater-dwelling species are entered into the database and available for online search.