The New Fish-Man Pirates is one of the notorious pirate crews in the One Piece universe, featuring during the Fish-Man Island arc. The crew is headed by a great white shark fish-man, Hody Jones, known for extreme hatred toward humans. Their ideology is based on the fact that fish-men had been discriminated against by humans, while most of its members have actually not truly been discriminated against.
Captain Hody Jones is a grey-skinned fish-man with a quite large stomach and tattooed on his right flank with the symbol of the New Fish-Man Pirates. His physical appearance and attitude are powerful reflections of the nature of the crew, which is violent and frightening. Other officers, each representing another species of sea creature, make up the hierarchy of the crew: Dosun, the Hammerhead Shark; Zeo, the Wobbegong Shark; Daruma, the Cookie-Cutter Shark; Ikaros Much, the Giant Squid; lastly, Hyouzou, the Blue-Ringed Octopus.
One of the prominent features of the New Fish-Man Pirates is the use of energy steroids—pills that momentarily grant extraordinarily high power while reducing life expectancy. This will soon become a focal point: their fighting style, ideology, and what their whole idea of giving up anything for a cause stands for.
The Noah, an old ark spanning over 800 years in age, located near Fish-Man Island, acts as the crew's base of operations. This gigantic vessel is part of their plans and serves as something more with the deeper lore of the One Piece world. Working in conjunction with Noah, it seeks to destroy Fish-Man Island, enabling the New Fish-Man Pirates to carry out their corrupted version of the island's ancient dream of moving to the surface.
The New Fish-Man Pirates, by themselves, pack quite a punch in terms of numbers, since they numbered up to 100,000 in their battle with the Straw Hat Pirates. That gigantic army had one of the most striking visuals in the Fish-Man Island arc: the Straw Hats standing against that overpowering army in one of the more iconic group poses.
Consequently, the New Fish-Man Pirates Arc makes up an integral part of the story in One Piece: racism and hatred passed through generations, a cycle of violence. Their pasts and motives are put sharply into contrast with ideals of human-fish-man coexistence being promoted by Queen Otohime and Fisher Tiger.
In the anime adaptation, the fight of the Straw Hat Pirates against the New Fish-Man Pirates dominates the scenes in Season 15. Most of the episodes are filled with action shows wherein Sanji and Zoro compete in defeating more fish-men, and Franky is wielding mecha powers. There are several episodes wherein fans of anime protested about Season 15; one of these is that Luffy gets punched by Hody, contrary to the original setting of the manga.
The New Fish-Man Pirates also work as a device to drive home the strategic position of Fishman Island. Being the final port of call before one enters the New World and an alternate route for people wishing to circumnavigate the Red Line, its position makes the threat posed by the New Fish-Man Pirates even greater in the broader context of the One Piece world.