A slender open-water shark with very smooth skin, which circles divers at offshore sites and comes closer over the course of an encounter.
To about 3 m, slender, dark grey-bronze above and white below, with a small first dorsal fin set well back and very smooth skin, which is what names it. The free rear tip of the second dorsal fin is long — more than twice the fin’s height — and that is the character that separates it from the other slim requiem sharks.
It is an open-water shark of the surface layer rather than a reef animal, which is why it turns up at the offshore sites on this site and not on a house reef. At the Galapagos and Cocos it appears in numbers around the boat and in the blue during safety stops; in the Red Sea and off Florida it is occasional. It is inquisitive, it circles, and it comes closer over the course of an encounter, which is normal behaviour and is worth expecting rather than reacting to. It is one of the most heavily caught sharks in the world as bycatch in tuna longlines and purse seines.
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.