Their colonies can be found on Phoenix, Tonga, Kiritimati, Tuamotu, Marquesas and Pitcairn Island.

Due to ongoing habitat loss, small population size, predation by invasive species and human exploitation, the Phoenix petrel is evaluated as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The Phoenix petrel was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[5] Gmelin based his description on the "white-breasted petrel" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham from a specimen belonging to the naturalist Joseph Banks.

[7] The Phoenix petrel is now one of 35 species placed in the genus Pterodroma that was introduced in 1856 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte.