Hunting close to the sea floor, the bignose shark feeds on bony and cartilaginous fishes, and cephalopods.

It is caught incidentally by commercial fisheries in many parts of its range; the meat, fins, skin, liver oil, and offal may be used.

The specific epithet altimus is derived from the Latin altus ("deep"), and refers to the shark's deepwater habits.

The type specimen is an immature female 1.3 m (4.3 ft) long, caught off Cosgrove Reef in the Florida Keys on April 2, 1947.

[5] According to patchy records from around the world, the bignose shark appears to have a circumglobal distribution in tropical and subtropical waters.

[9] Night-time captures of this species from close to the surface suggest it may perform a diel vertical migration, moving from deep water upwards or toward the coast at night.

[10] In the northwestern Atlantic, the bignose shark conducts a poorly documented seasonal migration, spending summer off the US East Coast and winter in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.

[1][4] Rather heavily built, the bignose shark has a long, broad, and blunt snout with the nostrils preceded by well-developed, triangular flaps of skin.

The lower teeth number 14–15 rows on either side and have narrow, erect cusps with extremely fine serrations.

[9] The dermal denticles are closely spaced but non-overlapping, such as that the skin shows between them; each is oval with three horizontal ridges leading to marginal teeth.

[4] The coloration is gray to bronze above, with a faint pale stripe on the flank, and white below; sometimes there is a green sheen along the gills.

[1] While large enough to perhaps be dangerous, the bignose shark seldom comes into contact with humans due to its preference for deep water.

[13] This species is a bycatch of gillnet, bottom trawl, and deep-set pelagic longline fisheries (particularly those targeting tuna) in many parts of its range.

Furthermore, most bignose shark bycatch occurs in international waters, where a single stock may be affected by multiple fisheries.