Long, broad, rounded fins mottled with white, and a slow soaring posture. An open-ocean shark that investigates persistently.
To about 3.5 m, grey-brown with unmistakable fins: the first dorsal and the pectorals are very long, broad and rounded at the tips, and mottled white. No other shark has that outline. It moves slowly with the pectoral fins held wide, which is a soaring posture rather than a swimming one.
It lives in the open ocean rather than on a reef, in the surface layer over deep water, and it is not a shark a diver meets by accident. In the Bahamas it is dived off Cat Island in spring on baited trips, and that is where nearly all the photographs come from. It is bold and it investigates persistently rather than passing by, and it is one of the few sharks a briefing will treat seriously — stay in a group, keep your back to somebody, and do not let one approach from behind. The population has fallen very steeply through bycatch in longline fisheries and it is listed as critically endangered.
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.