A small eastern Pacific requiem shark with a conspicuous dark blotch on the snout, over rock and sand.
To about 1.5 to 1.65 m. Slender and grey to brownish-grey above, whitish below, with a very long narrow conical snout. There is a dark spot ringed in white on the tip of the snout, which is the name and the identification. The nostrils are large, nearly transverse and set unusually close together. The fins carry no markings at all, which is itself useful in a family where the fin tips usually do.
In the eastern Pacific the confusion is with silky and Galapagos sharks. The long pointed snout with the white-ringed blotch, and the completely unmarked fins, separate it. The Atlantic blacknose shark looks similar but does not occur here.
It is a small, unobtrusive requiem shark that eats small fish and crustaceans. It has been recorded from the surface to about 190 m but is usually seen between 15 and 25 m, which is ordinary dive depth, so it is genuinely encounterable. It cruises over reef and sand rather than joining the big schooling aggregations Revillagigedo is known for. It is a continental shelf species, so the archipelago is at the edge of what it prefers and records there are few.
It is listed as endangered. Its whole range is the Mexican and Central American Pacific shelf, which is also where artisanal gillnet and longline fishing is heaviest, so it has no refuge population. It is not dangerous.
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.