It is distributed across the Southern Ocean but breeds at a few island sites, all close to the Antarctic Convergence zone.

The blue petrel was first described in 1777 by the German naturalist Georg Forster in his book A Voyage Round the World.

[3] Forster did not give the blue petrel a binomial name, but when the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin updated Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae in 1789 he included a brief description of the bird, coined the binomial name Procellaria caerulea and cited Forster's book.

It also produces a stomach oil made up of wax esters and triglycerides that is stored in the proventriculus.

[9] Finally, it also has a salt gland that is situated above the nasal passage and helps desalinate its body, due to the high amount of ocean water it drinks.

[12] The blue petrel feeds predominantly on krill, as well as other crustaceans, small fish, squid and occasionally insects.

The blue petrel has a very large range and an estimate population of 3,000,000 adult birds and thus it is rated as Least Concern, by the IUCN.