A montage of the 22 shark species I've had the good fortune to capture on film, of the 25 I've encountered to date.

Can you guess which slippery three made their escape? I'll post the answer at the end of this text.

You might think 22 isn't bad for just four minutes, although to be fair, the count was already 21 at around 2 and a half... buuuut, I'm not great at endings and then those threshers..... too beautiful not to indulge.

The three missing specimens are:
(with location of my encounter(s) in brackets)

1 SmallSpotted Catshark (UK waters)
The smallest and commonest of the numerous shark species that occur in British waters, these little guys were lurking around witnessing my every scuba moment when I was training as a teenager, but i didn't have a camera back then. I also knew them as lesserspotted dogfish, which somehow reinforced a belief they were somehow not "real" sharks, which they most certainly are and, like many, I overlooked them in favour of other species. Lesson learned. They're actually fascinating sharks and were the first to be observed using "scalerasping", the use of their abrasive skin in tearing chunks off their prey.

2 Blacknose Sharks (Bimini, Bahamas)
A few of these kept darting in sporadically for fish scraps while I was in Bimini and wading in shallows, rather than properly in the water, and with time limited. Under the circumstances, they were just waaaaay too speedy and unpredictable for a shot, although as most of the ones I saw bore their trademark black smudge on their snout, even with a quick flash past, they were easy enough to get a good ID on nonetheless.

3 Silky Sharks (Egypt, Djibouti, Socorro, Baja California Sur and no doubt others)
which is really odd, as I've seen probably hundreds of them, both in substantial schools at the surface from dive boats and the odd straggler in the water, although usually at the end of a dive, when air is low and battery lower. I did think I had a couple of at least recognisable images/clips from such encounters, but on closer inspection, it turns out they were both mistaken identifications of other species.

I feel I have a couple of (not very) new species to actively seek out and snap.