[3] Compared to other shearwaters, the species is unusually easy to identify at sea by its combination of considerable size and the distinctive, M-shaped banding pattern on its upperside while flying, uniquely among its genus and more akin to some gadfly petrels (Pterodroma), the prions (Pachyptila) and their relative, the blue petrel (Halobaena caerulea).

[3] This species is pelagic like the other Ardenna shearwaters; it is a transequatorial migrant ranging across most of the Pacific Ocean outside the breeding season.

Though it occurs in the subarctic waters off Kamchatka and the Aleutian Islands, it is not documented in the subantarctic Pacific; this apparent absence might simply be due to the lack of study opportunities in the vast islandless region south of the Polynesian Triangle, however.

It is fairly common well off the west coast of the United States during late summer and early autumn, and can generally be observed not far from land along the whole temperate and tropical coastlines of the Americas.

Its general absence from most of Melanesia and western Micronesia – where human settlement and sea traffic are considerable – is thus probably genuine; only isolated records, such as from the Marianas, Palau, and Yap, exist from west and southwest of the Marshall Islands.

[3] It is a colonial nester, breeding predominantly on Tawhiti Rahi and Aorangi, the main islands of the Poor Knights group offshore northern New Zealand.

At all times, however, the colonies at Tawhiti Rahi and on the smaller islets could supply birds for the resettlement of Aorangi, and Buller's shearwater was never considered threatened with extinction in the foreseeable future.