Fish

Piaractus brachypomus

Piaractus brachypomus, known as the pirapitinga or red-bellied pacu, is a large Amazon serrasalmid fish reaching 88 cm and 25 kg, widely farmed for food.

Piaractus mesopotamicus, the pacu or small-scaled pacu, is a large migratory seed-eating characin (Serrasalmidae) of the Paraguay-Paraná basin, IUCN Near Threatened, and a leading South American aquaculture species.

Pikaia

Pikaia, or Pikaia gracilens, is an extinct eel-like animal from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia, dating to about 505 million years ago.

Pike

Pike (Esox, family Esocidae): ambush freshwater predators of Europe, northern Asia, and North America; northern pike (Esox lucius) reaches 4.5 ft and 63 lbs, spawns up to 75,000 eggs, and is both a prized sport fish and a harmful invader outside its native range.

Pimelodidae

Pimelodidae, long-whiskered catfishes (Bonaparte 1835), a Neotropical Siluriformes family of 116 species in 30 genera, naked-bodied freshwater predators including Pimelodus, Pseudoplatystoma, and Hypophthalmus, distinct from Heptapteridae and Pseudopimelodidae.

Pimelodus maculatus

Pimelodus maculatus, commonly called the mandi or yellow-mandi catfish, is a medium-sized South American freshwater catfish important to commercial fisheries and aquaculture in the Paraná basin.

Pink salmon

Pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), humpback salmon or humpy, the smallest and most abundant Pacific salmon, with a fixed two-year cycle creating even- and odd-year lineages; Alaska's dominant commercial salmon catch.

Piranha

Piranha: South American freshwater fish of the family Serrasalmidae, with serrated interlocking teeth and a powerful bite (320 N in a 1.1 kg black piranha). Attacks on humans are rare single bites near guarded nests; the man-eater myth stems from Theodore Roosevelt's 1913 account.

Placoderm

Placoderms (Placodermi) are extinct armored jawed fishes of the Silurian-Devonian (about 438-359 Ma), the dominant Devonian vertebrates, jaw-bearing stem gnathostomes central to the origin of jaws and teeth, extinct by the Carboniferous.

Plagioscion squamosissimus

Plagioscion squamosissimus, South American silver croaker (pescada, curvina), a freshwater sciaenid fish native to Amazon-Orinoco drainages, up to 80 cm; invasive piscivore in Paraná and Doce River basins and a key artisanal fishery resource.

Plaice

Plaice: right-eyed flatfishes, chiefly European plaice (Pleuronectes platessa), a spotted North Sea food fish; also American plaice (Hippoglossoides platessoides) and Alaska plaice (Pleuronectes quadrituberculatus), each with distinct fisheries.

Platichthys flesus

Platichthys flesus, the European flounder, is a catadromous right-eyed flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae from the White Sea to the Mediterranean and Black Sea; commercial fish, IUCN Least Concern, up to 60 cm and 2.9 kg.

Platichthys stellatus

Platichthys stellatus, the starry flounder (강도다리), a left-eyed righteye flounder of the North Pacific and Arctic, from Korea and Japan to California, growing to 91 cm, estuarine and river-entering, minor commercial fishery, IUCN Least Concern.

Plecoglossus altivelis

Plecoglossus altivelis, the ayu or ayu sweetfish (Korean 은어), an amphidromous osmeriform fish of the family Plecoglossidae native to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China; IUCN Data Deficient, decreasing; major Japanese fishery and aquaculture species.

Plectropomus leopardus

Plectropomus leopardus, the leopard coralgrouper or common coral trout, is a western Pacific coral reef grouper; a protogynous hermaphrodite reaching 120 cm, it anchors the Great Barrier Reef fishery and the Asian live reef fish trade.

Pleuronectes platessa

Pleuronectes platessa, the European plaice (plie, Scholle, rødspætte), is a righteye flatfish (Pleuronectidae) of the Northeast Atlantic, the most important European flatfish fishery, with orange-spotted dextral adults up to 100 cm and 50 years.

Pleuronectidae

Pleuronectidae, the righteye flounders (halibuts), is a Northern Hemisphere family of flatfishes in Pleuronectiformes; the 2018 molecular revision recognizes five subfamilies, 24 genera, and 59 species, including the type species Pleuronectes platessa.

Poecilia

Poecilia (Bloch & Schneider, 1801) is a genus of about 47 livebearing poeciliid fishes including guppies (P. reticulata) and mollies (P. sphenops), plus the all-female clonal Amazon molly P. formosa, native to Central and South America.

Poeciliidae

Poeciliidae (livebearers) is a family of 278 small fish species in Cyprinodontiformes, from the eastern US to Argentina and Africa, defined by internal fertilization via the male gonopodium, live birth, and superfetation in some genera.

Pogonias cromis

Pogonias cromis, the black drum (corvina negra), is a large western Atlantic sciaenid fish from the Bay of Fundy to Argentina, the largest drum at up to 66 kg, a long-lived mollusk-crushing aggregate spawner and major Gulf of Mexico commercial fishery species.

Pollachius pollachius

Pollachius pollachius, the pollack (also lythe, lieu jaune, abadejo), is a northeast Atlantic gadid fish from Norway and Iceland to the Bay of Biscay, reaching 130 cm and 18.1 kg, caught mainly as bycatch and now under strict ICES catch limits.

Pollachius virens

Pollachius virens, saithe, coalfish, coley, or pollock, a North Atlantic gadid fish of the family Gadidae; dark-backed, 60-90 cm typically, five ICES stock units, major commercial fisheries, lean high-protein flesh.

Pollock

Pollock: Alaska pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus, walleye pollock), a North Pacific cod-family fish supporting the world's second-largest fishery, and Atlantic pollock (Pollachius virens); central to fish sticks, surimi, and Alaska bycatch disputes.

Polygnathus

Polygnathus (Hinde, 1879) is an extinct Devonian to Lower Carboniferous conodont genus, type species P. dubius, with nearly 650 named species; its P1 platform elements define Devonian stage boundaries and record rapid evolution.

Polyprion americanus

Polyprion americanus, the wreckfish (cherna, cernier commun), is a large long-lived Polyprionidae fish of temperate seas worldwide, reaching about 2 m and 100 kg, living up to 80 years, with pelagic juveniles drifting under floating objects and a quota-managed U.S. fishery on the Blake Plateau.

Pomacentridae

Pomacentridae (damselfishes, clownfishes, anemonefishes; Bonaparte 1831) is a family of tropical reef fishes with 29 genera and about 434 species, chiefly Indo-Pacific, dominant in the marine aquarium trade.

Pomfret

Pomfret: market name for deep-bodied food fishes of Stromateidae (Pampus argenteus, Pampus chinensis) and Bramidae (Brama); golden pomfret is the pompano Trachinotus ovatus. Major Asian fisheries, Chinese pomfret most prized.

Pompano

Pompano, genus Trachinotus (Carangidae jacks), includes the Florida pompano (Trachinotus carolinus), a prized western Atlantic food and sport fish from Massachusetts to Brazil, distinguished from permit by fin position, and a leading U.S. marine aquaculture species.

Porbeagle

The porbeagle, also known as Lamna nasus, is a shark of cold North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere waters that can hold its body temperature well above the surrounding water.