Oceanic Whitetip Shark

Habitat: The open-ocean surface layer, far from land; approaches offshore reefs and seamounts, and famously shadows boats

Distribuzione: Circumtropical in deep, warm offshore water worldwide; for divers the reliable overlap is Egypt's offshore Red Sea reefs

Comportamento: The defining trait is persistence. In an ocean of scarcity, longimanus investigates everything: it approaches divers directly, circles close, and returns again and again, often with a pilot-fish escort. The huge, white-mottled, paddle-shaped pectorals make it unmistakable at a glance.

Dieta: Squid and pelagic fish such as tuna; an opportunist adapted to a food-poor environment where nothing edible can be ignored

Dimensioni: tipicamente intorno a 2.0 m; documentato fino a 3.5 m (total length; most Red Sea animals run 1.8–2.5 m).

Descend and ascend as a tight group, avoid lingering at the surface, keep your camera between you and a closing shark, turn to face every pass, and end the dive if an animal escalates. Follow Egyptian park briefings: no feeding, no swimming off alone.

Critically Endangered after catastrophic bycatch and finning losses across all oceans, among the steepest declines documented for any wide-ranging shark. Retention is banned by most tuna fishery bodies, and the species is on CITES Appendix II.