A broad black rear edge to the tail, and a threat display divers should know how to read.
To about 190 cm, grey above and white below, with a broad black margin along the rear edge of the tail, dusky tips to the other fins and no white dorsal tip. The tail marking is the reliable separation from the whitetip and blacktip reef sharks.
It patrols drop-offs and channels where current runs, usually in loose groups by day, and hunts reef fish and cephalopods. It is one of the few sharks with a well-described threat display: an arched back, lowered pectoral fins, a raised snout and an exaggerated rolling swimming pattern, performed when the animal feels cornered — against a wall, in a cave mouth, or by a diver approaching directly. The correct response is to stop closing and back away along the reef rather than swim at it. Numbers across the Coral Triangle are much reduced and the species is listed as endangered. Recorded from about 5 to 50 m.
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.