[4] The flightless cormorant is the largest extant member of its family, 89–100 cm (35–39.5 in) in length and weighing 2.5–5.0 kg (5.5–11.0 lb), and its wings are about one-third the size that would be required for a bird of its proportions to fly.

Like all cormorants, this bird has webbed feet and sturdy legs that propel it through the water as it seeks its prey of fish, small octopuses, and other little marine creatures.

Distribution associates with the seasonal upwelling of the eastward flowing Equatorial Undercurrent (or Cromwell Current) which provides cold nutrient rich water to these western islands of the archipelago.

Flightless cormorants are extremely sedentary, remaining most or all of their lives, and breeding, on local stretches of coast-line several hundred metres long.

[9] Nesting tends to take place during April–October,[8][10] when sea surface temperatures are coldest resulting in an abundance of marine food, and the risk of heat stress to the chicks is decreased.

Items of seaweed (and also flotsam e.g. rope fragments) are brought predominantly by the male and gifted to the female to be woven into a bulky nest, just above high water mark.

Once the eggs have hatched, both parents continue to share responsibilities of brooding (protecting the chicks from exposure to heat and cold, and predation) and feeding the offspring, although the female provides 40-50% more food items than her partner.

As the chicks approach independence at 70 days old and if food supplies are plentiful, the female will desert the offspring leaving the male to carry out further parenting, and she will re-partner and breed with a new mate.

[11] Thus, females, but not males, can raise several broods in a single season, although studies over a decade indicate that environmental conditions allowing sufficient food availability for this, occur infrequently.

Having no enemies, taking its food primarily through diving along the food-rich shorelines, and not needing to travel to breeding grounds, the bird eventually became flightless.

A subplot of the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World sees Royal Navy surgeon and naturalist Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) discovering and then searching for flightless cormorants in the Galapagos Islands during the Napoleonic wars in 1805.

In the film's last line, the ship's captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) tells Maturin, who is anxious to return to the Galapagos to capture the bird, that "it's not going anywhere.

"[16] In reality Nannopterum harrisi would not be formally discovered until 1897 by the species' namesake, naturalist Charles Miller Harris, on an expedition sponsored by Walter Rothschild, who chose the name.