In 1773 both Cook and the naturalist Georg Forster mentioned the petrel in their separate accounts of the voyage.

[2][3] Forster wrote: On the 17th, in the forenoon, we crossed the antarctic circle, and advanced into the southern frigid zone, which had hitherto remained impenetrable to all navigators.

Some days before this period we had seen a new species of petrel, of a brown colour, with a white belly and rump, and a large white spot on the wings, which we now named the antarctic petrel, as we saw great flights of twenty on thirty of them hereabouts, of which we shot many that unfortunately never fell into the ship.

[5] When the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin updated Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae in 1789 he included a brief description of the Antarctic petrel, coined the binomial name Procellaria antarctica and cited the earlier authors.

[6] The Antarctic petrel is now the only species placed in the genus Thalassoica that was introduced in 1853 by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach.

They produce a stomach oil made up of wax esters and triglycerides that is stored in the proventriculus.

This can be sprayed out of their mouths as a defence against predators and as an energy rich food source for chicks and for the adults during their long flights.

[12] Finally, they also have a salt gland that is situated above the nasal passage and helps desalinate their bodies, due to the high amount of ocean water that they imbibe.

[19] This petrel has an estimated occurrence range of 77,500,000 km2 (29,922,917 sq mi) and between 10 and 20 million adult birds.

[1] Due to its huge range and large numbers, it has been classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a species of least concern.