The Great Shearwater breeds on South Atlantic islands and moves to the North Atlantic during boreal summer.
It has a dark cap and a white collar. In flight, it holds its long, straight wings stiffly and travels low over the waves.
Four female Great Shearwaters breeding on Inaccessible Island in the South Atlantic carried time-depth recorders. Three tags were recovered, and usable data from two females covered ten days and 930 dives. More than half the dives were shallower than two metres; the deepest reached 18.9 metres and lasted 40 seconds.
The females used different areas: one in 8–10°C water about 1,000 kilometres south of the colony, the other in 10–16°C water roughly 4,000 kilometres away. Their foraging trips lasted 17 and 22 days, and dives occurred most often around dawn and dusk. The study took place in November 2009; the cold-water female made 739 dives and the warm-water female made 191.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In the two dive records, the female using cold water made 739 dives and the female using warmer water made 191.