The streaked shearwater disperses from its east Asian breeding islands throughout the western Pacific and into the eastern Indian Ocean.

They are nocturnal at the colonial breeding sites, preferring moonless nights to minimise predation.

The genus Calonectris was introduced in 1915 by the ornithologists Gregory Mathews and Tom Iredale with the streaked shearwater as the type species.

Based on the lack of hybridization and differences in mitochondrial DNA, morphology and vocalisation, the complex was split into two separate species.

Calonectris kurodai, another fossil from the Middle Miocene Calvert Formation of Chesapeake Bay is named after the Japanese ornithologist Nagahisa Kuroda.