Fishes of Sydney Harbour

(ordered by family name)

A Bigbelly Seahorse at Balmoral Beach, Sydney Harbour. Photo © E. Schlögl. View larger image.

The following list of fishes has mostly been extracted from the Australian Museum Ichthyology Database. It represents species for which the Australian Museum Fish Collection holds a specimen. It is therefore not a definitive list but does cover the majority of species currently known to live in (or have swum into) the harbour.

Sydney Harbour has a remarkably rich fish fauna, with over 550 species known. This figure can be put into perspective when compared with 358 species occurring in Europe (Kottelatt, 1997).

As the fish fauna of Sydney Harbour continues to be investigated, additional species that represent new distributional records and new species will be added to this list. This page is being continually updated as new information becomes available. The description of the Sydney Scorpionfish by Motomura in 2004 highlights the fact that there is still much to learn about Sydney's wonderful harbour.

Number of species (October 2007) = 574