Maybe I can help, a little bit. I've seen some *real* sharks, up close and
personal. No, not in the wilds, but over at Sea World in California.

The great white has basically medium grey skin that goes paler on the bottm.
The skin is surprisingly rough, like sandpaper, so it's quite a matte
surface. They're usually covered with a thin layer of water though which
makes the skin look shiny when it's out of the ocean (such as when the
shark is partly out of the water. This shininess won't be visible
underwater though).

The salt water most sharks live in has a strong blue or blue-green filtering
effect which can have a strong effect on a shark's coloring, varying with
distance from the camera. There's no one correct ocean color, as the actual
color of the ocean can vary quite a lot from place to place, due to such
things as the depth of the ocean (deep water looks dark blue usually while
very shallow water over white sands takes on the lovely turquiose hues so
beloved by tropical island photographers), what the local material on the
ocean floor is, how much silt is in the water, how much plankton and algae,
and so on.

It can be hard to determine shark colors or the colors of anything else
undersea because the sunlight usually passes through a lot of water before
it reaches whatever is being photographed, tinging everything blue or
blue-green. The deeper down, the more filtered the light becomes. Most
divers carry a marine flashlight of some sort which brings out the colors
in such things as tropical fish and corals and such.

Tiger Sharks are a medium tan color, sort of like wet khaki pants, with
darker spots of dark brown to black. Most other familiar varieties of shark
are a plain medium grey in color with whitish underbellies.

Hope this helps.

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