Finding Nemo Fish Names: Every Character's Real Species

The main fish in Finding Nemo are Nemo and his father Marlin, both ocellaris clownfish, and Dory, a regal blue tang. The rest of the cast, with the species named by DIVE Magazine and Wikipedia's cast list:

• Nemo and Marlin: ocellaris clownfish, Amphiprion ocellaris (DIVE); see our ocellaris clownfish page for how to tell it from the percula
• Dory: regal blue tang, Paracanthurus hepatus, also sold as the palette surgeonfish or hippo tang (Wikipedia)
• Gill: Moorish idol, Zanclus cornutus (DIVE; Wikipedia)
• Bubbles: yellow tang, Zebrasoma flavescens (DIVE)
• Deb and Flo: a striped damselfish (Wikipedia) or four-stripe damselfish (American Oceans); Flo is only Deb's reflection
• Gurgle: royal gramma (Wikipedia; American Oceans)
• Bloat: porcupinefish, Diodon hystrix or D. holocanthus (DIVE); Wikipedia's cast list simply says pufferfish
• Tad: a butterflyfish (Wikipedia)
• Sheldon: a seahorse, genus Hippocampus (DIVE). Seahorses are fish
• Bruce, Anchor and Chum: a great white shark, a hammerhead and a mako (Wikipedia). Sharks are cartilaginous fish
• Mr. Ray: a spotted eagle ray (Wikipedia); DIVE names the white-spotted eagle ray, Aetobatus ocellatus

Not fish: Crush and his son Squirt are sea turtles (DIVE names the green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas), Jacques is a cleaner shrimp, Peach is a sea star, Pearl is a flapjack octopus and Nigel is a pelican (Wikipedia calls him an Australian pelican).

Dory is a regal blue tang, Paracanthurus hepatus, a surgeonfish of the Indo-Pacific found from East Africa and Sri Lanka to Japan, the Great Barrier Reef and Samoa, at 2 to 40 m (Wikipedia). It is royal blue with a black 'palette' pattern and a yellow tail; Wikipedia notes that Indian Ocean fish tend to have a yellow belly while Pacific fish are bluer.

Two points where sources disagree:

• Juvenile colour: DIVE Magazine says blue tangs are born bright yellow and turn blue as they grow; Wikipedia describes juveniles as having an incomplete black palette that joins up at maturity
• The tail spine: DIVE calls the spines beside the tail venomous; Wikipedia says they are not venomous but can cause deep cuts that risk infection. Either way, hold a tang with care

Size: DIVE gives up to 30 cm; Wikipedia gives adults at around 600 g. It is Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (Wikipedia). See our surgeonfish page for the rest of the family.

The films describe Dory's condition as short-term memory loss, and Wikipedia links it to anterograde amnesia, the inability to form new memories. Wikipedia's article on the character reports that some organisations have likened her traits to autism or ADHD, for example her missing social cues and her fixation on tasks such as reading the writing on a mask. It reports these as comparisons made by those groups, not as a diagnosis given in the films. Disability organisations also praised the way her condition is shown as part of who she is rather than a weakness to overcome (Wikipedia).

Flo is not a separate fish. In the film she is Deb's reflection in the tank glass, which Deb believes is her sister, so Flo is the same species as Deb. Wikipedia's cast list calls Deb a striped damselfish and American Oceans calls her a four-stripe damselfish. 'Four stripe damselfish' is a common name of Dascyllus melanurus, also called the blacktail humbug (Wikipedia). That species grows to about 3 or 4 inches, has three black and white bars with a fourth black band on the tail, lives around coral heads in the Indo-Australian Archipelago and is very aggressive as an adult (Wikipedia).

The dentist's aquarium in the film is set in Sydney, and most of its fish are Indo-Pacific reef species: the Moorish idol ranges from East Africa to Hawaii and Easter Island (Wikipedia), and DIVE places the yellow tang around Hawaii. Gurgle is the odd one out. The royal gramma is native to the tropical western Atlantic, from the Bahamas and Bermuda to Central America and northern South America (Wikipedia). In nature he would live an ocean away from the rest of the gang; only an aquarium puts them together.

Gill's longing to escape also has a real basis. Wikipedia describes the Moorish idol as notoriously difficult to keep, needing tanks of over 100 gallons, and notes that the character's wish for freedom likely alludes to this.

Some of them, with very different difficulty:

• Ocellaris clownfish: captive-bred stock is widely available, so no wild fish is needed; prices are on our ocellaris clownfish page
• Regal blue tang: the 8th most traded aquarium fish worldwide, with about 95,000 imported in 2011, and only bred in captivity in 2016 after a six-year effort (Wikipedia). Most sold are still wild-caught
• Royal gramma: commonly kept in reef aquariums and averages just over 8 cm (Wikipedia)
• Four-stripe damselfish: hardy but very aggressive as adults (Wikipedia)
• Moorish idol: notoriously hard to keep alive (Wikipedia)
• Porcupinefish: DIVE notes some species carry tetrodotoxin; see our porcupine fish page

Did the films cause a buying rush? Wikipedia reports that a 2017 study found little evidence of an immediate rise in purchases of wild-caught fish after Finding Nemo, and a 2019 Oxford study found no sales increase after Finding Dory; for the blue tang, online searches rose for two to three weeks but import data showed no significant increase.

• Great white shark (Bruce): adults average about 4.5 m and 750 kg; the largest females recorded reach 6.1 m and about 2 tonnes (DIVE)
• Green sea turtle (Crush): reclassified by the IUCN in 2025 from Endangered to Least Concern globally, though some regional populations remain vulnerable (Wikipedia); thought to live 60 to 70 years and reach 1.5 m, the only herbivorous sea turtle (DIVE)
• Eagle ray (Mr. Ray): DIVE gives wingspans up to 3 m and depths of more than 60 m
• Moorish idol (Gill): up to 23 cm, usually about 21 cm (Wikipedia)

In a shop or on a reef, the first two checks are simple: a Nemo-type clownfish is orange with three white bands edged in black, and a Dory-type tang is blue with a black palette mark and a yellow tail. Harder calls, such as ocellaris against percula clownfish, come down to dorsal spine count and the thickness of the black edging; our clownfish page covers them. Take a clear side-on photo and FishLens will suggest the species.

Research and drafting for this page were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed below. Every number names the organisation it comes from; where sources disagree we say so instead of picking one silently. Prices and counts are given with the date we checked them. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.