Grey-bronze with brilliant white tips on every fin. Bold at drop-offs and offshore pinnacles, and dominant over the other reef sharks.
To about 3 m, grey-bronze with brilliant white tips and trailing edges to every fin — dorsal, pectoral, pelvic and tail. That white edging on all the fins is unmistakable and separates it at a distance from the whitetip reef shark, which has white only on the first dorsal and the upper tail lobe, and from the oceanic whitetip, whose fins are rounded and much longer.
It is a shark of steep drop-offs and offshore pinnacles, and it comes in from open water rather than living on the reef. It is bold, it approaches divers directly and closely, and it will not be driven off; that is temperament rather than aggression, and the encounter is normally a slow circuit at a few metres. It is dominant over the other reef sharks and will displace them from a site.
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.