A slender coastal shark with black fin tips but no black on the anal fin, which is what separates it from the spinner shark.
To about 2.5 m, grey-bronze above and white below, slender, with black tips on the pectoral fins, the first dorsal and the lower lobe of the tail — but not on the anal fin, which is the character that separates it from the very similar spinner shark. The blacktip reef shark is a different animal with a much heavier black bar on the first dorsal and a white line under it.
It is a coastal and open-water shark rather than a reef resident, and it turns up over sand flats and along drop-offs. It is known for leaving the water: it spins through a bait ball and comes out of the surface still rotating, which is feeding rather than display. It is nervous around divers and normally keeps its distance.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.