Phocavis is an extinct genus of flightless seabird, belonging to the family Plotopteridae, and distantly related with modern cormorants.

[1] The holotype of Phocavis, LACM 123897, an isolated right tarsometatarsus, was collected in Late Eocene rocks belonging to the Keasey Formation, near Vernonia, Oregon, by James L. Goedert in 1979.

Comparison could however be made with the then undescribed remains of Copepteryx from Japan to verify the identity of the bone as a fossil of plotopterid.

[1] In 2004, in an heavily criticized article in which he considered the Spheniscidae to be related to Suliformes based on their shared similarities with plotopterids, Gerald Mayr noted that the tarsometatarsus of Phocavis shared similarities with that of the Eocene frigatebird Limnofregata, and tentatively assigned Phocavis as the sister taxon of a clade including plotopterids and modern-day penguins.

[3] In 2016, Gerald Mayr and James L. Goedert suggested that some of the remains attributed to Phocavis were virtually indifferentiable from those of its later relative, Tonsala hildegardae.