Awaous is a genus of river gobies in the family Gobiidae, found in coastal rivers, estuaries, and lowland streams across the Indo-Pacific — the atlas's records span India, Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Japan, and Malaysia. These are elongated, bottom-dwelling gobies with a mottled brown or olive body suited to blending against sand and gravel substrate, and like many tropical Pacific gobies, most species are amphidromous: larvae drift out to sea after hatching, then the juveniles return and migrate upstream, sometimes climbing wet rock faces and low waterfalls using a fused pelvic sucker disc to reach headwater habitat.
Awaous species draw far more attention from ichthyologists and island stream ecologists than from the aquarium trade — the river goby (A. banana), scribbled goby (A. grammepomus), and oopu nakea (A. guamensis, an important native stream fish across Pacific islands) are more likely to be studied for their remarkable upstream migrations than kept in a home tank. Where they do appear in the hobby, they need sandy substrate, steady current, and a diet of small invertebrates. Data on the genus's conservation status remain thin — the atlas notes six of its ten species as not yet evaluated — but the species that have been assessed are all Least Concern.