Gould had not seen the petrel in the wild so he quoted a passage from Audubon's Ornithological Biography about the petrels breeding on the coast of Newfoundland '"...they fly in front of the high rocks, passing and repassing a thousand times in a day".

The male and female are depicted lifesize.

DISTRIBUTION: Breeds on coasts of North Atlantic and North Pacific from Hokkaido to Alaska, between 64°N and 30°N. Winters throughout tropical Atlantic and eastern tropical Pacific. Complex and confusing taxonomy and not yet fully understood