Reef Fish Trainer

There are thousands of reef fish species, but it is impossible to take a thick book under water. Hence, we have no other choice than checking what we remember or have photographed in a fish ID book after getting out of the water. A slow learning process!

With the Reef Fish Trainer, you can learn names of dozens of common fish species in days, hundreds in weeks, before getting wet. Our students use it to train themselves before going on field trips to the Red Sea or Indonesia. When immediately recognising so many fish on their first visit to a reef, the self-satisfaction is overwhelming. And those fish that look unfamiliar, are recognised as something worth taking a picture of for further checking. 

Knowing names also facilitates sharing with others and may make you want to become a citizen scientist and contribute your observations to global initiatives. Some (of many) options are offered by e.g. iNaturalist,  reeflex or fishbase. In these online platforms experts and private enthusiasts with any level of expertise share their pictures and discuss identifications. We encourage you to use these sites as your digital encyclopedia and ID assistant.

In short, knowing reef fishes by name adds a rewarding new dimension to your dives and contributes to global biodiversity research. There has never been a better time to start than now.

Biologists like us prefer the scientific "Latin" names, because they are the global scientific standard. We keep them up-to-date by following Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes, which is also adopted by iNaturalist. The latter offers a more user-friendly, intuitive interface and includes popular names in many languages.

If you do not want to bother with scientific names, focus on the popular English names, which we added to the Reef Fish Trainer Red Sea. The deck for Indonesia currently only shows scientific names.

We took popular names from iNaturalist where available. Just realise that they are only locally valid and vary within and between countries. Versions with popular names in local languages (Arabic for the Red Sea or Bahasa for Indonesia) are on our wish list.

It is easiest to start the process on a computer.

Step 1: Download and install the freely available Anki app: https://apps.ankiweb.net (for Windows or Mac). Anki is a publicly available platform that is needed to run a Reef Fish Trainer deck, a digital stack of flashcards prepared for you by developers like us.

Step 2: Select and download the preferred deck from the list below (file type *.apkg).

Step 3: Open the Anki app. Choose File → import → file name of the deck you just downloaded. The deck now appears in the list on the Anki starting page. You can have many decks.

Step 4: Prepare access from your smartphone or tablet by clicking “Sync” at the top of the main Anki window on your computer. Set up a (free) account. Sign up. Having this online account will assure that whatever you have learned on whatever device will be synchronised between all your devices.

Step 5: Now you install the Anki app on your smartphone/tablet.
Android: visit the playstore and search for AnkiDroid Flashcards (free app). Install it and synchronise with your AnkiWeb account by pressing “Sync”. The deck will automatically be downloaded on your smartphone.
Apple: The iPhone/iPad app costs a little in the AppStore (25 €). If you do not wat to pay, log in to AnkiWeb in a web browser on your device (e.g. Safari).

Step 6: You are now ready to start learning
- Open Anki as an app or login with your username on the internet site in your browser (on any device).
- Click on your preferred Reef Fish Trainer deck to start or continue an ongoing learning process.
- Open "deck options" (cog wheel on the lower right of the Anki window). Click Study Options.
- Set Daily Limits “New cards/day to 20. Start with prudence. Increase this number later if you want.
- Set New Cards “Insertion order” to random.
- Select tags to define a subset of cards you would like to focus on (explained in detail in the next section "What are tags and why should I use them?").
- The other settings are less relevant. Explore them once you feel comfortable. 
- Save. Start learning. You'll notice it is not so easy at first, but in the end you'll be proud of yourself.

_{Note: Things may look a bit different on your system. No worries. You'll find what you‘re looking for by checking around or consulting the Anki online help.}

Tags define subsets in a deck. Learning subsets allows you to focus on groups of species rather than "all at once", which may be too much if you are starting from zero. This is how to use tags:
- Open your target Anki deck.
- Open the deck options (cog wheel on the lower right). Click on Custom Study. 
- Select “Learn new cards with certain tags”.
- Select tags to include or exclude. Multiple choices and combinations are possible.
- Consider whether you also want to change the maximum number of cards. Done.
- As long as you stay in the deck, you will only see what you specified in Custom Study.
- Anki can do more. Explore its functions and share your experience!

Our current full deck Red Sea Reef Fish Trainer offers four types of tags.

- 1-pic-per-species reduces the dataset to one image of all the species (and sexes if applicable) in the deck. Good start, but be aware of the drawback: You learn names without seeing the diversity in colour or stage within a species.

- Abundancy tags reduce the pictures to particularly common (or rare) species. They are based on own systematic observations at El Quseir, Mangrove Bay over >15 years. Values range from „A“ (= seen every time) to „H“ (= not seen here yet, but elsewhere in the Red Sea). Categories A-G hold about 50-60 species each.

- Eco tags pool species from families that share a similar ecology. Since the gobies and wrasses (incl. parrotfishes) are particularly species-rich, they represent an „eco-type“ of their own.

- Family: Selecting (or excluding) certain families allows you to focus on those you are specifically interested in (or prefer to ignore). 

To help people recognising fish with their own eyes while in the water, we realized how essential it is to not use artificial light for photography.

Hence, In contrast to what most underwater photographers will urge you to do, we refrain from using artificial light. With the amazing sensitivity of modern digital cameras, image stabilisation and ISO-noise reduction, natural light is all you need. To correct for the underwater blue-green colour cast, we use manual white balance or automatic underwater white balance (e.g. Sony, Olympus) with or without the addition of colour-correcting filters to capture fish colour "as seen by a human diver". In the Red Sea this works well down to at least 30 m.

Of course, professional pictures taken with a flash often look more spectacular, but usually because of unnaturally strong colour saturation, excellent detail, and maximal depth-of-field (diaphragm nearly closed). Yet, this does not represent how the photographer discovered the fish with their own eyes! A problem with flashguns is that they often add terrible artefacts such as strong reflections, dark backgrounds, exaggerated brightness for species that are essentially black, or poor colour for fish at distances beyond the optimal range of the current flashgun setting. Consequently, photographs in many fish books look quite different from how that same fish appeared to the photographer in the field.

Since it is our goal to allow people to discover and identify a fish before taking a picture, we put effort into showing them as they appear naturally to you or anyone else.

Just in case you wonder: 
1. Yes, of course we agree that certain diagnostic features are easier to capture with artificial light. Yet, some diagnostic visual traits for visual field identification are more reliably represented in "natural light" photographs.
2. Yes, we use artificial light too, but only when it really gets too dark.

Many fish species change colour in seconds. This is particularly spectacular in some genera of the Epinephelidae (Groupers), Lethrinidae (Emperors), Siganidae (Rabbitfishes), and more. In the Labridae (Wrasses and Parrotfishes) intermediate colour forms from juveniles turning into females turning into males make field identification a serious challenge. Moreover, colour also can vary a lot within stages. This makes Parrotfishes in particular a true challenge for visual field identification.

This is why our Red Sea Reef Fish Trainer contains pictures of as many of the colour forms as we have been able to document for any species to date. Environmental colour variation caused by depth, distance, time of day, visibility and cloud cover comes on top. Hence, also for species that show hardly any intrinsic colour change, we usually show multiple pictures to also cover some of this environment-dependent variation.

Showing natural colour variation fills a gap that is not covered by (most) field ID books.

Despite planned regular updates, we do not have the intention to cover "all" fish species of the Red Sea or Indonesia - that is too much, and misses the point as you would learn mainly species that you will never see! Just be aware that there are very many additional, but very rare species around. But the issue is that these tend to look very similar to the ones you are already familiar with. Hence, once you start to take fish identification serious, it is important to regularly cross-check with the all other sources. Here are the most important ones:

Sources for the Red Sea

Ryanskiy (2022) Red Sea Marine Life
The famous unterwater photographer Andrey Ryanskiy compiled the most complete picture book of fishes and other organisms of the Red Sea to date. His recent book is currently our first choice for rapid identification. Available as a pdf or iBook, it covers +810 fish species. The text is condensed. Excellent value for money.

Heemstra et al. (2022) Coastal Fishes of the Western Indian Ocean
A 5-volume fish encyclopedia that includes the Red Sea. Contributions from hundreds of scientists. Free download. Made for specialists and useful for all. Many drawings and pictures, many useful identification keys. A game changer for this part of the world, but perhaps not the first book you want to check out if reef fishes is a new area for you.

Lieske & Myers (2004) Coral Reef Guide Red Sea
The "classic of the past" with which most of us grew up. It inspired generations of Red Sea enthusiasts. In 2023, this book is definitely outdated in species naming and picture quality, but still a source we continue to consult. Translated in many languages.

Eagerly expected: Bogorodsky, Randall and Krupp - Coastal Fishes of the Red Sea
We are very excited about the pending publication of this book, which promises to be nothing less than the most comprehensive overview of the coastal fishes of the Red Sea. Sergey Bogorodsky is the authority of Red Sea fish systematics. The book is expected to offer extensive literature, descriptions, diagnostic traits, details about live stages, biology and distribution, and multiple pictures per species. None of the books mentioned above offers this level of detail. It is at the top of our wish list. 

Sources for Indonesia

Details to follow - but for now, any book with Gerald R. Allen as the main or contributing author is an excellent starting point. Andrey Ryanskiy published an excellent picture book Reef Fishes of the Coral Triangle in 2019 that we like a lot too.

Fish ID internet sources

iNaturalist – reeflex – fishbase – Reef Life Survey – Fishes of Australia – Australian Museum – etc.
Let us know if we missed important non-commercial, scientific sources.

The majority of pictures was taken by Nico K. Michiels during work-related and private trips. He is in charge of confirming species identifications, naming and optimising images, updating the database and producing the Anki decks. 

Thanks to the following reef fish enthusiasts for their contributions:

Matteo Santon (Bristol) made me aware of the "world of Anki" as a perfect tool to train students to recognise fish species in the field. Together, we made the first desk for the Red Sea in 2018. It all started from there.

For the current decks, additional pictures were mainly contributed by Nils Anthes (Red Sea), Sandra Dangelmayer (Indonesia), Franka Michiels (Red Sea) and Matteo Santon (Red Sea and Indonesia).

Other contributors: Benja Blaschke, Valentin Fritsch, Stefan Greif, Béatrice Härtel, Chris Harvey, Julia Kastner, Robin Kraft, Julika Merckle, Yvonne Meyer, Chiara Obst, Giovanna Reichert, Carolin Rieber, Gregor Schulte, Jennifer Theobald and Bram Van der Schoot.

Valentin Fritsch is working on a completely revised Reef Fish Trainer for North-Sulawesi (Indonesia) for his Bachelor's degree to replace the older, compact version currently on offer. 

© Copyright statement

The use of the Anki Reef Fish Trainer deck for personal training purposes is free.

All images remain property of the Animal Evolutionary Ecology Group at the university of Tuebingen (represented by Prof. Nico K. Michiels). Use for non-commercial, educational purposes is free, assuming you always mention the source. We appreciate feedback!

Use for commercial purposes is prohibited, unless a prior usage contract has been agreed upon.